Dearest World,
This film tells the tale of a long exposition into what we know of Robin Hood traditionally. Starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett as leading man and lady. Crowe, portraying Robin Longstride delves into the character, by playing a heroic, and goodhearted man, yet unchanged from his past movies. While Cate Blanchett playing Marion Loxely, a woman who's in charge of the head of Nottingham. Her husband is away at war, so she runs the household with her father, Sir Walter Loxley played by Max von Sydow. Cate has an enduring performance, where she makes hard choices for her father. Max von Sydow brought humor to this battle fighting, drawn out movie. His portrayal of a blind man convinced viewers that he could get away with whatever he wanted, because he couldn't see.
From the villains we see Mark Strong as Godfrey a man who aids France in advancing troops into England and Oscar Isaac as Prince John. Isaac's character wines and acts immaturely as a ruling king. His performance of acting range is shown by drawing the audience in with his plots and plights with being an inexperienced king.
One of the few magical qualities of this film were the locations that were used. Spanning from different cities in Wales to London, England the continuity of the area remained in tact.
The realism of costume design, brought the middle aged world to life. Cate Blanchett always wore a simple brown dress or earthy colors to emphasize the woods and where she lived. While the merry men of Robin Hoods clan stuck to neutral colors as well.
These merry men added a liveliness to the film, with their singing and dancing. Scott Grimes playing Will Scarlett and Kevin Durand as Little John and Mark Addy, as Friar Tuck. They brought out Crowe's curious and adventurous side.
Title design and motion graphics stood out for me. The font looked completely original and inspired by the Book of Kells. Although there were so many places where the film jumped, at least the font was pretty to look at. Thank the Lord it wasn't in papyrus, like in a certain film that has made more money than Bill Gates could produce in ten years.
This film could've been 90 minutes long. I blame this on the director Ridley Scott and editor Pietro Scalia and writer Brian Helgeland on this one. Five other people got story credits, but didn't get deemed the screenwriter. Two and a half hours for a movie that does more explaining then action is problematic and convoluted. I got more confused when the locations kept changing, and new characters would appear and then never be seen again.
Some of the points where it lagged are on the party scenes, too much emphasis was placed on them, and the battles although that's where the action was placed certain scenes should have been completely dropped. On the bright side specific details of shots and coverage as we film people would say was a solid ingredient in keeping my attention. Action shots were finite in the way if someone was shooting an arrow the audience sees three or four different angles before someone shoots it. Now of course this all depends on who's shooting the arrow and for what reasons.
Robin Hood is three out of five stars for me in terms of war movies. Sadly, history got a little messed up in telling this tale, especially when modern type ships appear such as a U-Boat type design arrives on the shore. Beautifully shot, just a little misguided.
Love,
The Reviewing Writer
