Taron Egerton may be the hottest thing on screen these days, but even his beauty couldn't save the latest Robin Hood from disaster. Despite attractive and usually talented leads, Otto Bathurst's attempt at a revamped update on the timeless story squanders its few virtues. Essentially, it robs from us and gives to no one.
An origin story for a cultural icon that doesn't really need one, the newest version tries really hard to create its own franchise with highly bankable stars. Egerton emotes as Robin of Loxley, Jamie Foxx charismatically tries to do something fun with the part of John, and Ben Mendelsohn overacts his bleeding heart out as the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham. Eve Hewson as Marian and Tim Minchin as Friar Tuck are just bad, and there's really nothing else to say about that. F. Murray Abraham and Jamie Dornan show up for a few scenes that effectively set up future installments in the series -- for clearly the ending wants there to be more -- and while their scenes are perhaps the most interesting in this flick, I desperately do not want to see more.
The film's occasionally handsome design seems inspired by ugliness, something I'm still not sure works to the film's benefit. The overloaded sets are bewildering and messy, often dripping with grime and needless filth that distracts more than enhances. During multiple chase scenes -- for there are many in this action-packed romp -- I found myself utterly lost and wondering aloud why there were so many intensely detailed planks of wood everywhere. Weird, I know, but if the story is worthwhile and/or the action engaging on its own, you don't need the spectacle to be so overwhelming.
And the screenplay is just laughably stupid. It begins with the typical "Forget what you know" blather that subtextually says, "We aren't actually doing a Robin Hood story, we're doing some ignorant bullshit as an excuse to make money." It tries desperately to make itself relevant to teenagers, preaching at length about the evils of institutionalized religion, theocratic government, poverty and taxation, and damning the Crusades as if they needed it any more. Its one virtue is to suggest that Islam is in fact the victim of Western culture, not its villain; unfortunately, this point is not hammered home as hard as possible to the film's target audience. Instead -- and I note my position as a jaded millennial -- the film, as a clearly capitalist appropriation of public domain iconography, becomes hilarious in its outspoken messages of socialist principles. So, mostly (arguably hypocritically) progressive, except in its anti-feminist attitudes and relegation of Jamie Foxx to his role as a mystic black mentor to the white savior.
It's all highly silly stuff, with impossible action and ludicrous strings of plot points wallowing in special effects. The contemporary gloss of leathers do nothing to update the story -- though the designers clearly tried -- and the hint of rock music underscores the proceedings to mind-numbing effect. Moments of the script reach for immediacy: the Sheriff repeatedly shrieks about being the "law and order" and working to enslave the people in his mines, a hellish construct that looks suspiciously like an industrial park, and if you don't get post-traumatic flashes of Donald Trump you must be living under a rock. Paired with these modern elements are those that yearn for timelessness: in a moment of Robin's doubt, Marian encourages him by saying with absolute conviction, "If not you, who? If not now, when?" After involuntarily gagging, I choked on my own bile.
IMDb: Robin Hood
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