Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Robin and the 7 Hoods Blu-ray Movie Review

The Bad Guy Steals the Picture

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 11, 2015

As Frank Sinatra Jr. observes in his commentary, Robin and the 7 Hoods (or, for short, just "Robin") should have been a lot of fun, both for the cast and the audience. In 1963, Frank Sr., now a certified movie star as well as a singing legend, persuaded studio head Jack Warner to try his hand at re-creating the MGM movie musical formula. With Sinatra producing, the studio assigned versatile director Gordon Douglas, who could do everything from steering Elvis Presley in Follow That Dream to supervising giant ants in the sci-fi classic Them! The screenplay was by comedy writer David R. Schwartz, who had penned numerous episodes for The Amos 'n Andy Show, and the songs came from Jimmy van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, with band leader Nelson Riddle overseeing the music. With Sinatra joined by fellow Rat Packers Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., plus the return to the screen of one of Sinatra's early idols, the legendary Bing Crosby (in what would be his last film), a splendid time seemed guaranteed for all.

But it was not to be. Early during production, on November 22, 1963, a shattered Sinatra had to inform the cast and crew that his friend, President Kennedy, had just been assassinated in Dallas. Filming shut down for the day. When it resumed the following Monday, the mood had changed. What had been an upbeat set with people happy to come to work became a gloomy grind, as the nation mourned the fallen President. Robin's producer and star took the loss especially hard, due to a deep personal attachment to the 35th President, even though Kennedy had been deliberately distancing himself from Sinatra in recent months, because his brother, the Attorney General, was concerned about the singer's rumored connections with organized crime.

As if the national tragedy weren't enough, in December of the same year, Sinatra's 19-year-old son was kidnapped and held for ransom, which the star paid to secure Frank Jr.'s release. (The kidnappers were captured, tried and sentenced to prison.) With so much distraction, Sinatra reportedly considered shutting down Robin altogether, but elected to continue. Released in June 1964, the finished product was reasonably successful, but it has an unfinished quality, as if the creative energy was spent and everyone was doing the best they could to get finished.

Robin's script borrows names and relationships from the Robin Hood legend and inserts them into Prohibition-era Chicago, where a gang war erupts following the assassination of Boss Big Jim Stevens (Edward G. Robinson, in an uncredited cameo). Most of the city's criminals fall into line under the architect of Big Jim's demise, Guy Gisborne (Peter Falk), who has the support of the corrupt Sheriff Octavius Glick (Robert Foulk) and his Deputy Sheriff Alvin Potts (Victor Buono). But the holdout is Big Jim's loyal friend, Robbo (Sinatra), who considers Gisborne an upstart and a traitor. Much of what passes for a plot in Robin consists of Robbo and Gisborne attacking each other's illegal operations and trying to kill each other's supporters and subordinates.

Robbo is not without friends. One of them is Will (Davis Jr.), whose last name is probably "Scarlett" and whose love of gunplay is expressed in a song entitled "Bang! Bang!" Another stalwart, Little John (Martin), drifts into town hustling suckers at pool; he and Robbo have their first encounter with pool cues in hand (get it?). Then there's the daughter, Marian (Barbara Rush), that no one knew Big Jim had. She first appears at his funeral, the very picture of high society, then offers Robbo $50,000 to find and eliminate her father's killer. When the killer is later dispatched—by someone other than Robbo—she has the money delivered to Robbo's club, but the honorable gangster won't accept it and has Little John donate it to an orphanage. This brings him yet another ally in the person of Alan A. Dale (Crosby), the director of the orphange, who also happens to be a walking thesaurus and natural press agent. Dale promotes Robbo to the papers as a modern-day Robin Hood. Soon every orphan is wearing a feathered green hat and sporting a toy bow and arrow.

Robin features a memorable score, including "My Kind of Town (Chicago)", which has become a Windy City standard. It also boasts several memorable sequences, one of which unites Sinatra, Martin and Crosby in an impressively choreographed routine where Robbo and Little John teach Alan A. Dale how to dress properly while performing the original song "Style". After Gisborne destroys Robbo's club, he has it rebuilt by an architect (Hans Conried) so that it can quickly transform into a church whenever the lookout spots trouble approaching. The elaborate revolving set is a sight to behold, and the phony revival service led by Alan A. Dale to the song "Mr. Booze", as the hapless police force looks in vain for something illegal to raid, is energetic and hilarious.

But these individual set pieces are isolated gems lacking a coherent plot to show them off. The original idea probably was to transform Robbo into a lovable rogue, as Danny Ocean is for at least some of Ocean's 11, but nothing in the story leads in that direction, including the relationship with Marian, who, in this variation of the Robin Hood tale, is a kind of cut-rate femme fatale, working her way through each crook in town until she finds someone willing to help rebuild her father's empire. Maybe if Sinatra hadn't been distracted by outside events, he might have realized, as the film's producer, that the script needed retooling, or at least a new conclusion. As things stand, the film doesn't so much end as run out of gas.

In its transformation of the noble outlaw of Sherwood Forest into a Chicago bootlegger, Robin does contains the germ of a trenchant satire about greed and its corrosive effects on even the best of intentions. None of the characters has altruistic motives, and everyone is out for themselves. In the hands of a Sondheim or a Kander & Ebb, the songs would have been witty and ironic, written with a poison pen and commenting with a vicious twist on the story's events. But that wasn't what audiences expected from performers like Sinatra, Martin, Crosby or Davis Jr. Most of the tale's cynical spirit ended up in the dialogue spoken by the chief villain, Gisborne, which helped Peter Falk steal the picture from his (then) more famous co-stars.

Robin and the 7 Hoods Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

With elegantly composed anamorphic widescreen cinematography by William H. Daniels, who also shot Ocean's 11, Robin and the 7 Hoods is the most recent of the three films new to Blu-ray in Warner's Frank Sinatra Collection, and it hasn't been treated any better. To the extent Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray compares favorably to those of Anchors Aweigh or On the Town, the difference is down to superior source material from a later era, because the same indifference toward Blu-ray mastering is evident in the disc. Like the other two titles, this 123-minute film has been crunched onto a BD-25, at an average bitrate of 19.99 Mbps. The result isn't filled with obvious artifacts like Anchors Aweigh (although there are some to be seen, if you look closely), but the image isn't particularly film-like and fine detail is frequently lacking, which is a shame given the intricacy of the sets and costumes.

Black levels are erratic, and the problem is easy to spot, if one watches the frequently worn tuxedos, which too often shade to gray. Such inconsistencies raise legitimate questions about the accuracy of the remaining palette, which is certainly lively, although it may be wrong. Except for the beginning and end titles, Robin did not make extensive use of opticals, so that the softness of the image cannot be attributed to that common cause from the pre-digital era. High-frequency rolloff appears to be the culprit.

Robin and the 7 Hoods Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Robin's original mono track has been encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0. The track is in very good shape, and the dynamic range is wide enough to encompass both Nelson Riddle's orchestra and the tommy gun fire that is an essential component of the song "Bang! Bang!", as well as being part of many non-musical scenes. Dialogue and vocal performances are well-reproduced, and the transitions between singing and speaking are less jarring than in musicals from a decade earlier. Even though the sound mix occupies only a single channel, the layering of nightlife sounds in the various speakeasy scenes, with roulette wheels spinning, chips being tossed and glasses clinking, is effective. Mono gets a bad rep, but a track like this one serves as a reminder that mono delivered big-screen pizzaz for a long time and did it well.

Robin and the 7 Hoods Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Warner previously released Robin and the 7 Hoods on DVD in 2002, and again in 2008, with the commentary, featurette and trailer. For Blu-ray, it has added three cartoons.

• Commentary with Frank Sinatra Jr.: There is interesting material in this commentary, but it's spread thinly over the film's running time, with long periods of dead air. The most notable omission is any reference to Frank Jr.'s own kidnapping. While it's understandable that the subject would be painful and private, it's complete elision, with the concomitant emphasis on the Kennedy assassination, makes the commentary somewhat misleading in its presentation of the factors that interfered with the film's production.



• What They Did to Robin Hood (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 6:34): This vintage promotional featurette uses on-set footage from the cornerstone dedication ceremony and from Robbo's big reopening.



• Robin Hood Makes Good (480i; 1.37:1; 7:47): In this 1939 Merrie Melody, a trio of singing squirrels decide to play "Robin Hood" and nearly fall victim to a duplicitous fox.



• Robin Hood Daffy (1080p; 1.37:1; 6:39): This 1958 Merrie Melody directed by Chuck Jones finds Daffy Duck in Sherwood Forest trying to prove to Porky Pig's friar that Daffy is, indeed, Robin Hood.



• Rabbit Hood (1080p; 1.37:1; 7:57): In another Chuck Jones-directed Merrie Melody, Bugs Bunny hopes for rescue by Robin Hood when he is caught poaching royal carrots.



• Trailer (480i; 2.40:1, enhanced; 3:29): Referring to the song "Mr. Booze": "Could anyone doubt a production that includes an ethical exhortation of this caliber?"

Robin and the 7 Hoods Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even if Robin doesn't work as a whole, the film has its moments, and Peter Falk's performance keeps re-energizing the narrative. But why bother to release the Blu-ray at all, if you're going to do a slapdash job? Once again, the product of a media giant's home video division is put to shame by comparison to the work of tiny independent labels like MPI or Magnolia—or WHV's own corporate sibling, the Warner Archive Collection. Fans of Robin can reasonably justify owning this disc, at a bargain price, on the ground that this is the best it has ever looked. For those not already familiar with the film, I suggest waiting for some of Sinatra's better efforts, which one can only hope will be better treated.