Guess what – Hollywood’s at it again! The far-right anti-Islamic opening to this movie, has some good action, it’s just a shame it’s tarred with encouraging such a sentiment in its impressionable action-loving audience. Fortunately, it soon shows things from another view point, so it’s not all bad.
Morgan Freedom does a decent job as the imprisoned warrior Arab freed by Robin Hood who himself is played quite well by Kevin Costner (of Waterworld) as he makes his own escape from foreign lands after being held captive there for 5 years. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio does well as Lady Marian. And Alan Rickman performs very convincingly as the main antagonist – Sheriff of Nottingham – he’s a very snidey, ruthless, unpleasant character but that’s exactly what his role is meant to be, so he does a great job in that respect. I dare say he must be drawing parallels from his real-life persona in order to perform so convincingly – that’s probably the biggest backhanded compliment I’ve ever dished out, but it’s so true. We’re also treated to a decent minor role by Christian Slater as a young man of the woods. Nick Brimble did alright as Little John, ‘best man of the woods’. And Michael Wincott does a great job as Guy of Gisbourne – the main baddie early on, who gets killed by his cousin, the Sheriff of Nottingham, for failing to quell the trouble from Robin Hood so many times already.
There’s a fair amount of cool action and worthwhile drama in this movie, but much of the action and drama is also distressing – unpleasant to watch, for those who prefer smooth action hero movies without the grit & gristle.
Also, why depict the Celts as savage barbarians? Celtic people are the indigenous people of the UK, driven to the mountainous areas of Wales, Scotland and Ireland by the invaders & oppressors of years gone by. They’re warriors but they’re also general friendly, nature-respecting people. Again, it’s just Hollywood spreading racial & cultural disrespect as usual.
Overall I rate this movie as Decent considering how strong a movie it is with all its cast members, props, plot and script attributes. I must confess to skipping forward a few times during the less pleasant scenes, especially since I’ve seen this movie so many times before. If it were a bit more condensed around the more boring and agitating bits, and went to town a bit more with its existing creativity and props during the action scenes, and made better use of all its superstar actors, it could have been a much better movie for my taste, but as it stands, it’s just Decent – a level better than OK – a couple levels better than barely Watchable. Not quite on a par with the thoroughly captivating movies I’ve rated Pretty Good, and a couple levels down from the Very Good movies reviewed on this site thus far.
The ending was pretty good too – quite fitting for a movie rated higher than just OK. It had a good build up and sustained its levels of energy and creativity for a good half hour, and it ultimately ended with everything working out just fine. We were even treated to a short scene of Sean Connery playing the returning King Richard, at the very end. Perhaps his convincing brief performance in his role here inspired the somewhat similar movie First Knight (1995) where he played King Arthur and had plenty of screen time doing it.
It’s not Kevin Costner’s best action movie – I rated Waterworld a level higher than this one. But it’s up there – Robin Hood is probably his second best movie to my taste, just ahead of The Bodyguard (co-starring Whitney Houston).