'Reimagined' Robin Hood makes you wonder why they bothered
Robin Hood ★★½
Rated M, 116 minutes
Hollywood doesn't remake films any more. It "reimagines" them, doing its best to make them "relevant to our times".
It's an approach fervently embraced by Otto Bathurst, director of the latest Robin Hood, which is set to spawn a new franchise. There's no Lincoln green on show here. This Robin (British actor Taron Egerton) looks as if he's been outfitted by Armani, while Little John (Jamie Foxx) favours leisurewear in shades of indigo in keeping with his Moorish origins.
He and Robin first meet as enemies on the battlefield during the Crusades, which have been "reimagined" to resemble episodes from the current war in Syria. Snipers use repeating cross-bows and something that the film's designers are calling an "arrow-firing RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]". Arrows don't twang, whir or hum in the old-fashioned way. They crack like pistol shots.
Tuck (Tim Minchin) and Robin (Taron Egerton) in Robin Hood. Credit:Attila Szvacsek
The story's salient features remain. Robin is still Lord Loxley (only the spelling has changed) and he's still dedicated to overthrowing the Sheriff of Nottingham, played by Ben Mendelsohn, whose steely looks are enhanced by a menacing snarl and a long leather coat in metallic grey. But in a further bid for contemporary relevance, the script has supplied a reason for the Sheriff's evil disposition. As an orphan child, he was abused by the churchmen who were supposed to be taking care of him.
He is at his most venomous in his scenes with a fiendish F. Murray Abraham, cast as a Cardinal visiting from Rome. Their mutual hatred doesn't stop these two from collaborating to extract criminally high taxes from the people of Nottingham, which is in the grip of its own premature Industrial Revolution. The peasants have all become miners and Robin's love, Marian (Eve Hewson) runs the soup kitchen while organising protest meetings. Believing that Robin has been killed in the Crusades, she also has a husband, Will (Jamie Dornan), another anti-establishment activist.
By this point, the anachronisms are piling up so fast that even the arrival of Tim Minchin as a slimmed-down Friar Tuck fails to astonish. He's in charge of merriment, which is otherwise in short supply. It isn't supposed to be. The bromance that turns Robin and Little John into allies has been touted as a reliable source of robust humour but it doesn't really deliver, despite the considerable amount of effort they both put into it.
On their arrival in Nottingham, they hang out at Robin's derelict manor house, which has been ransacked by the Sheriff in one of his tax grabs, and set about turning themselves into medieval gym bunnies with a gruelling regimen based on hauling wagon wheels uphill. At least, Robin does the hauling while John makes condescending remarks about his performance. Robin also learns that he'll have to improve his archery skills. At the moment, his arrows fly through the air so slowly that John can catch them in one hand. Better equipment will help, John acknowledges, giving him a new, speedier model that doubles as a bayonet.
Jamie Foxx and Taron Egerton in Robin Hood.Credit:Larry Horricks
When Robin has recovered his breath, they plan a heist – or rather, several heists, working up to the big one. They will rob the city's Treasury, but first, Robin will resume his lordly status – necessitating another range of Armani-inspired garments – and ingratiate himself with the Sheriff. In this way, he can case the Treasury's layout and delivery routines.
When do they get to Sherwood Forest? Not until the very end, sadly. This is very much an urban take on the legend. It even includes a valiant attempt to make a dash by horse and cart look like a car chase. Its choreographer has characterised it as "Ben Hur meets The Fast and the Furious".
Bathurst (who also directed TV's Peaky Blinders) and his team seem so intent on portraying the film as anything but a Robin Hood picture that it's hard to understand why they didn't just make yet another superhero movie. I guess they could have given us a Robin in a cape, but that's already been done.
Sandra Hall is the author of two novels (A Thousand Small Wishes and Beyond the Break), two histories of the Australian television industry (Supertoy and Turning On, Turning Off) and Tabloid Man, a biography of Ezra Norton, the man who established Truth and The Daily Mirror. She was film critic at The Bulletin magazine prior to joining The Sydney Morning Herald in 1996.
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