Review of Robin Hood (2018) by Dottheeyes — 22 Nov 2018

Dismal. At its core, it commits a similar sin as Ridley Scott's 2010 film, which is still far more accomplished and satisfying overall. It does not realize Robin Hood's charm is best encapsulated by Errol Flynn, committing acts of daring (yes, in tights) with a heavy dose of mischief, romance, and whimsy.

Scott used Robin as a bizarre Trojan horse to dramatize the origin of the Magna Carta and revisit beats in Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven. This film posits the Sheriff of Nottingham is a war profiteer responsible in large part for the Crusades in the Holy Land, and he forces the Nottingham peasantry to live in and around mines (an industrial wasteland out of Mad Max); it is as overblown as it is preposterous. (The cringe-worthy opening voice-over edgily assures us, "This is no bedtime story.") One longs for a charismatic bandit in the forest instead of a po-faced revolutionary in leather.

Director Otto Bathurst's approach feels schizophrenic, as if he followed a different studio mandate every other day on set. At times the picture plays as a fairly standard Hollywood-style medieval adventure, albeit not a very impressively staged one, but then there are abrupt, bizarre lapses into Moulin Rouge!-style anachronism and badly outdated aesthetics in the vein of 300, including egregious overuse of computer-enhanced slow motion. It never finds a consistent stylistic rhythm; the comics-panel end credits, following a sad tease of a sequel we will never see, suggest perhaps the intention was to pretend Robin Hood is a superhero, the -first- first Avenger. Who knows?

And though it presumably enjoyed a healthy budget, the production feels cut-rate at points, from obvious use of green-screen to official edicts and wanted posters that appear as if they were created in Microsoft Word by an intern using the most "antique" font he or she could find on the drop-down menu.

Everyone in the strong-on-paper cast responds to the void by either appearing adrift (Jamie Foxx has no clue how to play his role, an Arab man trying to avenge his son's death at the hands of English soldiers, and spends his time on screen squinting and changing his accent) or doubling down on what they assume is expected of them (Ben Mendelsohn uses every snide sneer and bellicose growl in his toolbox to play the oddly stationary role of the Sheriff). I was particularly disappointed by how unimpressive Bono's daughter Eve Hewson is as Maid Marian, here conceived as an improbably stylish quasi-social activist. She delivered a sublime performance (at times eerie, at times sensual, at time vulnerable) on Steven Soderbergh's The Knick, one of my favorite television series, but none of the magnetism is on display in her first high-profile on-the-poster film role.