The Last of Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

The Last of Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 9, 2015

Hollywood turns the camera on itself and takes a look at one of its own in The Last of Robin Hood, a film from Writers/Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice). Based on the true-life illicit relationship between Actor Errol Flynn (Robin Hood) and underage teenager Beverly Aadland and sourced from Aadland's mother's book The Big Love, the film offers a relatively easy, though not necessarily glamorous or even all that intimate or purposeful, look at a relationship as seen through the eyes of three very different yet fully interconnected people. It was several decades later -- in an interview with People magazine -- that Beverly Aadland herself recounted and confirmed the events, separate of her mother's novel, and a quarter-century before the movie adaptation.

The teenager and the movie star.

When Hollywood legend Errol Flynn (Kevin Kline) spies a beautiful young woman (Dakota Fanning) walking across the lot to play a bit part in a movie, he sends his aide to retrieve her and bring her back to his office. He learns that she's named Beverly, and the two strike up an instant bond that leads them to make love -- he somewhat forcefully, she reservedly -- and begin a full-on relationship. When his driver recognizes her as a one of his high school classmates -- several years removed from him -- and that she's underage, Flynn doesn't cut off the relationship but rather pursues it further, in his mind only living every day as if it where his last, the law be damned. Beverly's mother Florence (Susan Sarandon) disapproves but doesn't forcefully remove her daughter from Flynn's path, hoping it will jumpstart her career.

Character dynamics and interactions define the film. This is a straight, personal, though not convincingly intimate, exploration of what is, essentially, a forbidden love, at least as defined by the letter of the law and not of the human heart. The film doesn't gloss over the age difference -- it's one of the primary story drivers -- but the picture doesn't quite manage to offer a fully enlightening look at it, failing to explore the darker, deeper, most emotionally intimate details of it. The picture plays as largely superficial, not going into great detail behind closed doors but offering more a cursory look at the nitty-gritty, focusing more on the affair's broader details rather than what it meant to the people engaged in it. As such, the movie feels like a dead-end almost from the beginning and never quite finds a firmer footing as it tells the story but never really bothers to find it, to feel it, to understand it.

There's not much going on with the performances, either. While there's a nice offbeat chemistry between Kevin Kline and Dakota Fanning in their first intimate encounter -- he's the charming, confident go-get-'em full of bravado and himself sort and she's notably uneasy and mildly passive yet emotionally thrilled and gently trembling -- the performances stagnate from there, failing to offer any sort of added depth later on where issues with the age gap and the illegal nature of the relationship are all but shrugged away by the characters, the torch instead carried by outsiders looking in. It does give the characters a sense of true comfort in who they are and what they are doing -- numbers be damned -- yet the failure to really dive into any sort of intimate emotional connection between them slips away and the responsibility, then, lies almost completely with Susan Sarandon's Florence.

To be sure, Sarandon has the best part in the movie and plays it well to the point that she largely masks Kline's flamboyant Flynn and Fanning's innocent Beverly, but not quite so well enough -- though by no fault of her own -- to hide the film's most glaring shortcomings. It's Sarandon's various tugs and pulls that give the character the best dynamic. She lives vicariously through her daughter and does whatever she must to ensure that she finds success in Hollywood. Yet she has trouble when her daughter is placed in the ultimate compromising situation. She initially rejects it outright when she first learns the true extent of the relationship -- when her daughter discusses "sleeping arrangements" for the family and Flynn -- but later comes not to support or endorse it, but sometimes tacitly finds it palatable and sometimes fully repulsing. It's a shame the Flynn and Beverly characters cannot find even that much depth, but at least Sarandon gives the movie a little weight in an otherwise fluffy movie that's not aimless but that never quite seems sure of what to do with the story beyond plopping it up on the screen.

The Last of Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Last of Robin Hood's 1080p transfer is very bright but otherwise stable. Juiced-up contrast gives everything an almost blindingly white appearance. Skies are washed out, colors pale, and skin tones ghostly. Even bright reds and greens and other assorted hues -- this is an abundantly colorful film -- feature that aggressive, blinding contrast. As a result, black levels are notably pale and fatigued. Fortunately, the image looks otherwise great. Details are precise under the handsome filmic appearance. Faces, pinpoint clothing lines, brickwork, and other background details look magnificently full and naturally complex. A few shots of leafy exteriors look almost overly sharpened but still find a good, appreciable level of natural detail. The image suffers from no evident wear beyond some speckling in old vintage film clips. If one can look beyond the contrast, the picture quality excels in all other areas.

The Last of Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Last of Robin Hood arrives on Blu-ray with a simple DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Music is the primary focus here, playing with a good, well defined front stage presence and commendable clarity. Surround support is extremely minor to the point of being practically unnoticeable. Minor sound effects, such a ringing telephone and flashing camera bulbs, enter the stage with an appropriate definition and realism. Dialogue is delivered cleanly and efficiently through the center, yielding a realistic, straightforward vocalization from every character.

The Last of Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of The Last of Robin Hood contains no supplemental content. A UV/iTunes digital copy voucher is included in the Blu-ray case.

The Last of Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Last of Robin Hood is a disappointingly uneven movie that never cares to explore the darker, more intimate details of an illicit relationship, at least not within the relationship itself. While that implies a certain level of comfort with it, the movie largely glosses over almost everything in the Flynn-Beverly romance and leaves the deeper pieces to outside characters, particularly in Susan Sarandon's Florence, the movie's best character by a large margin and, in turn, the best-played part. The Last of Robin Hood seems otherwise happy to simply throw the story on the screen and hope for the best, yielding a superficially intriguing but ultimately disappointingly tepid and superficial examination of one of Hollywood's most scandalous affairs. Universal's Blu-ray release of The Last of Robin Hood offers simple audio, good video, and no supplements. Skip it.