Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie Review

Paging Errol Flynn. Or even Kevin Costner.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 15, 2010

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Filmgoers have had a glut of Robin Hoods through the years, everything from the 1922 silent with Douglas Fairbanks to the 1973 Disney animated version to, heaven forfend, a softcore porn outing made in the Free Love era’s perfect year, 1969, called The Erotic Adventures of Robin Hood. Television audiences have also had their share of Robins, from the 1950s series starring Richard Greene to the British series Robin of Sherwood which featured the evocative music of Clannad. And yet, which version is almost universally cited as the perfect amalgamation of charm, wit, romance, adventure and action? No, it’s not Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It is, of course, the spectacular 1938 version starring Errol Flynn as Robin and Olivia de Havilland as Marian, with a supporting cast the likes of which will probably never be seen again, people like Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale and Una O’Connor. This Warner Brothers classic had everything in abundance: a dashing hero played perfectly by Flynn, a lovely and demure, yet feisty, heroine in de Havilland, rousing action scenes, a classic score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and effectively unobtrusive direction by Michael Curtiz. More than 70 years after its release, The Adventures of Robin Hood remains a model of freshness, élan, and sumptuous fun. Obviously, people have tried, over and over and over again, to either recapture that magic or to recast the Robin legend in a different light, usually to no avail. Enter Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe, who evidently started with what might have been a completely original and unexpected take on Robin’s story. This film was originally titled Nottingham and posited the Sheriff as the good guy (to be played by Crowe) and Robin as the baddie. That at least might have made for a fascinating new take on the subject matter. Crowe insists in one of the extras on this Blu-ray that the first version of the screenplay read like CSI: Sherwood Forest, but after having seen the finished version of Robin Hood, even that take might have been preferable to what we’re ultimately given here. This is yet another film with everything that money can buy, gorgeously produced, shot, and, for the most part, splendidly performed, and yet there’s that ineffable missing element. You might call it magic, if you’re inclined toward the ephemeral. Or, you might simply call it fun, that sense of wonder that permeates virtually every frame of the Flynn Robin Hood and which is sadly missing from this gargantuan attempt to reinvent Robin of Loxley.

Russell Crowe is Robin Longstride, assuming the ID of Robert Loxley, and soon to become Robin Hood.

Scott and Crowe proved quite conclusively that they are able to reinvigorate a hoary genre with new energy in Gladiator, but unfortunately they seem to both be on auto-pilot throughout much of Robin Hood, and even worse, they attempt to bring a Gladiator ethos to a film that requires a different approach. Any reworking of Robin Hood which kills off the “good” king, Richard the Lionhearted, in the opening few minutes, obviously is casting its fate to the wind and not relying on expected tropes to carry it through. For that Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland are to be commended. And in fact this entire film is constructed as the sort of flipside to Richard Lester’s lovely Robin and Marian, a film which depicted the couple in their later years. Here, instead, we’re given the “prequel” as it were, the events supposedly leading up to Robin Longstride becoming Robin Hood. That involves a mad ruse whereby Robin assumes the identity, Martin Guerre style, of Marian’s (Cate Blanchett) husband who is killed in an ambush while attempting to return the deceased King Richard’s crown to England. We therefore get an almost screwball comedy ambience at times as Marian and Robin pretend to be husband and wife, so as to insure Marian’s property rights after her father-in-law, Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow) dies. (It was the feudal era, after all, when real estate could only be vested in males).

Parts of this fanciful reimagining work quite well, specifically the glorious production design by Arthur Max, which beautifully recreates a late 12th-early 13th century world. (A lot of the film was shot on existing ruins, giving the film added verisimilitude). While Crowe is perhaps too stoic for the role, Blanchett invests Marian with a proto-grrrl power modernism that, while completely at odds with the historical veracity of the piece, makes the character quite interesting and extremely watchable. Von Sydow and William Hurt, as old cohorts in a decades-long freedom fight, bring suitable gravitas to their roles, though von Sydow seems more tic-laden than he usually is. Oscar Isaac as Prince (later King) John seems to be channeling Joaquin Phoenix from Gladiator, perhaps on Scott’s direct orders. It’s a hyperbolic performance, but too reminiscent of the previous film to be completely effective.

Robin Hood simply suffers from too much bloat, and too many extraneous elements. Part of what made the 1938 film so breezily entertaining is that it cut to the bone, cinematically speaking, with virtually nothing unnecessary having made the final cut. Here, even the theatrical version runs well over two hours, and the extended director’s cut adds some 15 minutes to that total. When we have more or less useless subplots like a coterie of orphans running around Lord of the Flies style, one increasingly begins to wish for a more focused, direct approach to the story, no matter what revisionism the filmmakers have opted to take.

Scott seems especially off his game here. He has always been one of the most extraordinarily gifted visual minds in film, even when he fails to reign in the excesses of the storylines of any given project. Here, though, we get completely odd uses of zoom lenses, inept framings, and, most surprisingly, some really oddly shot battle scenes. When you have Scott aping Prince of Thieves director Kevin Reynolds’ iconic “arrow’s eye view” with the camera, not once, but several times, you have to wonder if this director’s director simply didn’t have a requisite amount of inspiration to bring to this project. A lot of this film actually plays (and is shot) like, to paraphrase Crowe, Gladiator: Sherwood Forest, and it's an oddly disconcerting case of déjà vu confronting the viewer here, both because of the oft-told subject matter, but also Scott's reliance on his previous blockbuster for some of the ideas here as well.

The somewhat frightening prospect about all of this is the film ends with a “And so the legend begins” subtitle, obviously preparing the audience for a sequel where the real Robin Hood story can finally take place. Considering this film’s large haul at the box office, that’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. Let’s hope if that comes to pass that everyone associated with the project spends some time in the screening room reacquainting themselves with 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. It may be over 70 years old now, but it still hasn’t been topped.

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Robin Hood scuffles onto Blu-ray with a good, though at times problematic, AVC encoded transfer in 1080p and a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. When this transfer works well, it works very well indeed. Notice the gorgeous crosshatching pattern, where the viewer can almost feel the texture of the parchment, on the opening scroll scenes. The entire opening segment, bathed in gorgeous blue tones and with admirable black levels and contrast, look brilliantly sharp and well detailed. Close-ups give us abundant detail, from Crowe's increasingly weathered face to Blanchett's unkempt auburn hair. Robin Hood is a deliberately dark, and at times desaturated, film, tending toward yellows and browns for large swaths of its two and a half hour-plus running time. While some may wish for a more deeply saturated palette, the blanched and almost monochromatic look of the film help to recreate its time period quite admirably. As seems to be the case with many films set in this same time period, the Blu-ray can't quite resolve the chainmail completely, and some minor, but noticeable, shimmer creeps into the image when Robin and his cohorts are in that kind of costume. More troubling, and really rather odd, were one or two moments of shimmer on completely unexpected scenes. Watch, for example, in the first showdown scene between Robin and Godfrey, in the hall outside of King John's throne room, and you will notice some frankly odd shimmer on the gray walls behind the actors. Overall, though, despite this film's inherent bleakness and darkness, this is a respectably solid looking effort with only a few minor anomalies keeping it from a better score.

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Much, much better is Robin Hood's exceptionally immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. In fact, this is where this film finally erupts into some of the fun and imagination that the rest of the movie seems to lack. The battle scenes here are incredibly impressive, with zinging arrows flying in from the surrounds, and the bone crunching sound of men and horses colliding providing some very robust LFE. But even in ostensibly simpler moments, the sound design is exceptional. In the "carnival" scene, where Robin is plying his "shell game" trade, listen to how the ambient crowd noises spill effectively into the surrounds, while the very "small" noise of Robin moving the shells about the table still come through very clearly, and completely aptly from a directional standpoint. Dialogue is very cleanly presented here, and the quasi-Celtic underscore also works very well in the overall mix. There's really a fantastic use of dynamic range here; scenes cut from very loud and boisterous sound effects to whispers quite frequently, and it's very, very effectively rendered on this DTS track.

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Robin Hood has a nice array of extras supplementing the feature, which is available both in the original theatrical version (running 2:20:26) or the extended director's cut (running 2:35:48).

• On the theatrical cut, a nice Bonus View option called Director's Notebook offers a wealth of background information, including some of Scott's original hand drawn conceptions for various scenes;
• Deleted Scenes (HD; 13:06) presents several completely deleted, or in some cases extended, scenes which failed to make even the longer cut of the film. Editor Pietro Scalia's optional commentary is very insightful as to why certain scenes, while fine in and of themselves, fail to make the final cut of the film;
• Rise and Rise Again (SD; 1:02:41) is a better than average featurette detailing the background of the film, from the first Nottingham version to the final product;
• Art of Nottingham is an interesting compendium of slideshows and galleries, split into four discrete elements, Pre-Viz/Storyboards, Production Design, Costumes, and Behind-the-Scenes. Each of these elements has introductory comments available;
• Marketing Archive contains two theatrical trailers and six TV spots.

The Blu-ray is also BD-Live, D-Box, pocketBlu and social media enabled. An SD-DVD of the theatrical cut as well as a digital copy are also included.

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Robin Hood has eluded a variety of filmmakers through the years, despite its seemingly timeless appeal. Watching this humongous and often bloated version, I couldn't help but wonder what the original Nottingham concept might have been like. Post-modern revisionism is fine, but Scott stuffs this turkey with too many extraneous ideas, everything from anti-Muslim bigotry to women's rights to children with colds (and, no, I'm not kidding). The production design here is the real star, and it looks mostly fantastic on Blu-ray. If you don't mind the muddle of the screenplay, there are dribs and drabs of an exciting action feature here. What could have elevated this film is a less relentlessly dour take on its subject. The medieval era may in fact have actually been like this, but that doesn't mean filmgoers are going to want to spend two and a half hours experiencing it, however vicariously.