Robin Hood

I was reading Roger Ebert's review of this movie before I went to the 9:55 opening night showing of it, and the one thing that I took from it was that it was kind of frightening to realize that Hollywood today is taking these once innocent movies or shows and turning them into something completely different. The only example I can think of off the top of the dome right now is Harry Potter. That's not as bad but it is starting to get more and more ominous in it's appearance (Harry Potter, that is). That gave me mixed feelings heading into this, but we'll get to my opinion later.

In Ridley Scott's rendition of 'Robin Hood', we actually go way back to the very beginning, before we knew anything about Sir Robin Longstride. He is merely just an archer in King Richard the Lionheart's army. Unfortunately, the king gets killed in battle. On the way to deliver the king's crown, the man in charge of the mission also gets killed. They're not having such good luck at the moment. Robin then takes it upon himself to bring back the crown. So him and his men set off and do indeed deliver said crown. This makes the fallen king's son, John, king. One of the kings' men, Godfrey, ends up betraying King John and making his own army. Somehow it all falls on Robin to keep things safe, once their home is attacked by Godfrey's army. There ends up being a lot of fighting, a lot of scottish sounding accents, and as many beards and olde english dialogue to make you're wildest dreams come true.

It is hard for me to describe this movie without rambling on forever, so forgive me for sounding vague. I do have problems with this movie. First of all, it was really long at 140 minutes. I can only take so much Russell Crowe in one sitting. The other problems I had was that it was really confusing in the first chunk of the movie, which then led me to lose interest in the movie. There is plenty of action, and that was a bonus, but when it was all said and done, I did not enjoy my time watching this. I was hoping for something more, but it fell short. A must see though if you like action.


Rating: 2 out of 4 stars