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Robin Hood

ROBIN HOOD (D: Ridley Scott, 140 min) Opens Friday (May 14). For venues, times and trailers, see Movies. Rating: NN


I once jokingly said that Ridley Scott has gotten so practised at gargantuan historical epics that he could make one in his sleep. And now, it seems, he has.

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After 1492: Conquest Of Paradise, Gladiator and Kingdom Of Heaven, we have Robin Hood, an elaborate, expensive and entirely joyless look at Sherwood Forest’s most famous outlaw.

“Joyless” isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind when you hear the words “Robin Hood.” (Isn’t he the guy who hangs out with merry men?)

But Scott is not a director blessed with a sense of lightness Matchstick Men is a freak accident in his filmo graphy. He treats the material like a slightly more modern version of Gladiator: battle scenes defined by dirt, sweat and mayhem interspersed with dull dialogue exchanges between courtly power brokers and cranky monarchs.

The echoes of Gladiator continue in Russell Crowe’s dour performance as Robin Longstride. He may be a lowly archer in King Richard’s army, but he’s a brilliant tactician and a leader whose courage and steadfastness command the loyalty of his men. He’s Maximus 2.0.

When Danny Huston’s blustery King Richard dies in battle, Longstride and his trio of sidekicks – Little John (Kevin Durand), Will Scarlet (Scott Grimes) and Allan A’Dayle (Great Big Sea belter Alan Doyle) – flee the battlefield in the armour of slaughtered knights. Posing as Sir Robert Locksley, Longstride is honour-bound to deliver the dead man’s sword to his father in Nottingham. There, our heroes eventually cross paths with a traitorous nobleman (Mark Strong) leading a French invasion of England.

“Eventually” is the key word here. It takes Scott and screenwriter Brian Helge land more than half the movie to set their plot in motion. With a running time of over two and a quarter hours, that’s an awful lot of time wasted on a subplot that finds Longstride forced to continue his impersonation of Sir Robert to keep the dead man’s land from being claimed by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen), while bonding with Sir Robert’s father (Max von Sydow) and widow, Lady Marion (Cate Blanchett).

Additional script bloat is provided by scenes in the court of the newly crowned King John (Oscar Isaac, borrowing liberally from Joaquin Phoenix’s petulance and scorn), which do little more than remind us that England and France are at war, chewing up even more screen time before Scott allows his effects department to unleash hell in a grand climactic battle.

But there’s nothing to care about. It doesn’t matter that King John is a callow ruler who’s easily misled by a sinister adviser, and we don’t need to have John’s unfair taxation system explained at length. It’s exactly as impor tant to the story as the spice tariffs that set the Star Wars prequels in motion – which is to say, not at all. But Scott insists on playing both threads out at length, much as Gladiator forced so many pompous Senate sequences upon its audience. He even squeezes in an early version of the Magna Carta Robin Hood was a crusader for indivi dual rights, so why not?

Because it doesn’t move the story forward, that’s why not. When that final battle comes around – shot with the same blue-grey filters and step-frame technique that Scott stole from Saving Private Ryan all those years ago – it’s just another hollow, technically proficient flourish.

It may look great, but like everything else in Robin Hood, there’s nothing behind it.

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