Keith Reynolds's ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES
John Irvin's ROBIN HOOD
Two film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Two versions of the same legend became
available within a month of each other. Neither does much
justice to the original story but Irvin's television version
turns out to be by far the better version with a little less
flash and a little more intelligence and historical detail.
Reynolds's film is not as bad as is claimed by the critics,
but it still gets only a low 0 while I would give Irvin's
film a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
I saw the coming attraction for ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES several months ago and decided then that I wanted to see it. After all, it did not have police and was not set in L.A. How many films come out that even are set before the 20th Century? Filmmakers don't seem to want to gamble on ever-diminishing public knowledge of history. I had hope this could be a good film. Then I read the article in the June 1991 CINEFANTASTIQUE which said: "The new film's approach to the legend can be [the producer/screenwriter's] description of the Merrie Men as medieval Hell's Angels. Add to that [director Keith] Reynolds's observation that '[Christian] Slater [as Will Scarlet] plays a 12th Century James Dean' (complete with Rocker quiff), the overall opinion that Maid Marian is a 12th Century feminist, and the fact that this film's humor is of a very contemporary nature.... [The Sheriff is] evil personified. With King Richard absent England has reverted to paganism and human sacrifice. The God/Christianity vs. Evil/Darkside is even more potent." [according to co- producer/co-screenwriter John Watson]. This was not at all encouraging. This is no place near what a telling of Robin Hood should be. I wrote an article at the time complaining about filmmakers who do not have respect for the material. It sounded as if the film was being made with no respect for the characters or the period. They had let Christianity versus paganism become the conflict rather than the Anglo-Saxon populace against the Normans who had conquered the country in the previous century and had set themselves up as the ruling nobility. That is why Robin, though technically from a noble family, had no real political power. He was of Anglo-Saxon nobility and was considered by the Anglo- Saxons to be rightfully of the ruling class. But it was the Normans who ruled.
Then Fox Television did their own version of Robin Hood, one not great but creditable. I wondered if it might not be better than the film it was trying to imitate. And I got into at least one argument with someone who thought I was not being fair to ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES. Then I went on vacation. I came back to find ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES opened to calamitous reviews. Now I have seen it and I would say that while everything bad I predicted about the film turned out to be quite true, I think that the film was not as bad as most of the critics seem to think. So part of my job now is to defend the film that I formerly criticized.
There is little wrong with ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES that could not have been fixed by just not making this film about Robin Hood. The Robin Hood of legend was outlawed as a young teenager. It was his youth that made him an outlaw since after being taunted about his youth he shot a king's deer to prove he had the prowess of a man. The film's concept that Robin had been to the Crusades and had picked up a Moorish sidekick was inventive but also purely invention. That the Moor would bring with him the knowledge of gunpowder is unlikely and the telescope--not invented until the Renaissance--is absurd. In a lighter film, such as THE CRIMSON PIRATE, such anachronisms might be a little more acceptable, but with the exception of the performance of the Sheriff of Nottingham (played by Alan Rickman, who has more fun with his role than the audience does), this film is just not that light. Speaking of Rickman's Sheriff, while I would probably have liked to see the film less tongue-in-cheek, Rickman's screwball wedding scene has to rank as a guilty pleasure. (The real Sheriff was married and had a daughter who eventually succeeded at the feat her father botched: killing Robin Hood, albeit and old and ill Robin Hood.)
One of the major problems was that the script was just not very professionally written. Pieces that have already been used in far too many films show up here. [Minor spoiler alert: The reader who has not seen the film may want to skip to the next paragraph.] In searching for Marian, Robin must fight a hooded guardian who nearly bests him. Can you guess who this warrior is? Yup! In two or three scenes characters bragging about their expertise are cut short because they were not watching what they were doing and did something like riding right into a tree branch. They even manage a horror film jump scene. This is very inadequate script-writing. And when the Sheriff tells Robin his father died "squealing like a pig," this was an allusion to a similar line also spoken to Costner in THE UNTOUCHABLES.
Dialogue is particularly anachronistic, with characters using lines like "full of piss and wind" and saying Robin has "balls of stone." The Sheriff tells someone, "Shut up, you twit." This is the kind of script- writing where whenever someone falls there is always a fortuitous haystack to break the fall. When swords strike each other or a wall there are always sparks.
But having promised to defend the film, I will. The main criticism that has been leveled at the film is that Costner is much too laid back to play Robin. This strikes me as nonsense. He does not have the umph of an Errol Flynn swinging through the trees and calling, "Welcome to Sherwood, milady!" Costner's performance is at worst non-traditional, but with the exception of some accent problems it is still a valid interpretation of the character. The film has been criticized for having too many scenes that are too dark. It seems to me that the lighting is perfectly reasonable to create a period feel. The night was a lot darker in the late 12th Century. As for the darkness of tone in what some will interpret as children's film, good! We are talking about some nasty people. Let's not sugar-coat them.
As the film ended I decided it deserved some breed of a zero rating. The gratuitous rock music song over the end credits convinced me it was a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
What shows up the pandering and silliness of Kevin Reynolds's ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES even more is the other version of Robin Hood made for Fox Television and directed by John Irvin. This is not a flashy ROBIN HOOD and it certainly is not the original story, but it is certainly the more intelligent retelling of the story. I think that was pretty much to be expected. Director John Irvin is probably most respected for his BBC television adaptation of John LeCarre's TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY. He has gotten into wider-appeal films since, things, like GHOST STORY and HAMBURGER HILL and even RAW DEAL, but clearly this is a man who can do intelligence on the screen. Rather than side-stepping the politics of the time as Reynolds did, Irvin's version, written by Sam Resnick and John McGrath, is steeped in the politics of the time. Robert Hode (played by Patrick Bergin) is a Saxon noble who has been a lifelong friend of the Norman Baron Daguerre (played by Jeroem Krabbe). Robert wants what is best for the Saxons; Daguerre wants England to become strong under Norman rule. Both are "good guys." The "bad guy" is another Norman noble, Miles Falconier (played by Jurgen Prochnow), whose selfishness turns Norman against Saxon and shows the two friends where their differences lie.
Falconier, incidentally, is cruel to Norman and Saxon alike. The reason for his presence in the land is to force himself on the Norman Lady Marian (pronounced Mar-ee-AHN) in an arranged marriage. Marian (played by Uma Thurman), of course, has taken a liking to the Saxon who has been outlawed and who has changed the spelling of his last name to "Hood." It is with pride that she tells Falconier that she has already given herself to another "with the greatest of pleasure." Incidentally, I caught only one reference to the Sheriff of Nottingham and it was unclear if it referred to any character we had seen. It might have been a title for Daguerre.
While Reynolds's version insists on making the good guys Christian and the bad guys into believers in witchcraft, the Irvin version, probably with more historical accuracy, makes the Normans the Christians and the Saxons still drenched in the so-called "pagan" religion of their ancestors. While the Reynolds version gives the edge to the Saxons because a Moor brings them scientific knowledge anachronistic to the period, the Irvin version gives the edge to the Saxons because the Normans still accept some of the pagan customs. (Which of course they still do, as witnessed by the presence of the spring fertility symbols of the rabbit and the egg at Easter and the winter solstice holiday's association with mistletoe, holly Yule logs, and the bringing of trees indoors, all inherited by Christmas. It is as much of the compromise worked between Norman and Saxon as anything else is.)
So Irvin's is the second version of ROBIN HOOD which also plays very fast and loose with the original story, but at least it replaces fidelity to the story with some intelligence and some historical accuracy, and in that it is the better film. My rating for Irvin's ROBIN HOOD would be a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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