Review of Robin and Marian (1976) by Thomas L — 27 Feb 2009

I didn't know this was Audrey Hepburn's first film in ten years until after I saw this. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of how this ended, but maybe it's consistent with the film's theme throughout if I'm honest with myself.

Interesting to see Sean Connery and Robert Shaw as enemies fifteen years after From Russia with Love. This was right after Shaw did Jaws, and about a year or so before he died of a heart attack. He was terrific as the Sheriff, much more subtle than you'd think.

And speaking of Bond veterans, John Barry did the music. With this much Bond cred, you'd think the fight scenes would've been better. No, not nearly. At best they were clunky. Sometimes I wondered why they bothered since the action wasn't the point at all.

It was the relationship between the title characters, picking up after they'd left off twenty years earlier. Even after everything Robin went through in the Crusades, and after Marian had led such a chaste life during that time, their feelings for each other hadn't cooled a bit.

There's a great romance here, but it sort of gets lost now and again. You get the feeling the writer wasn't sure what kind of story he wanted to write.