Word: robin
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...Robin Hood films are, of course, not about a Norman-Saxon feud or the equitable redistribution of goods. They are about star quality. The mythic Robin Hood is a figure of strength, grace, wit and humanity. He radiates moral self-confidence. He is a fellow's best friend and a woman's dream lover. He personifies what in simpler times was called masculinity. No wonder the role lured some of the cinema's top exemplars of derring-do. Douglas Fairbanks (1922), Errol Flynn (1938) and Sean Connery (1976) made memorable glosses on the English lord -- and no matter that...
Today, when dour antiheroes have glutted the market, Robin Hood is again the good guy of choice. Just last month Fox TV aired a new version, directed by John Irvin and starring Patrick Bergin. That Robin Hood is no instant classic. Its action scenes consist mostly of guys milling outside castles and roaring like juiced-up fans at a Midlands football match. But Bergin does invest the woodsman from the 1190s with a bit of 1990s Green Power. Waging guerrilla war against the ravagers of Sherwood Forest, Bergin is at one with his sylvan surroundings -- a butch Bambi...
...Costner's larger, busier take on the legend, the only green power is at the box office. With a sigh, the script reprises Robin's recruiting of his Merry Men (a pallid crowd here), his verbal jousting (uninspired), his romance with Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, her wondrous screen potential again untapped). The movie treats these plot points as tiresome requirements, not chances to work fresh alchemy on old elements. At 2 hours 20 minutes, the enterprise lacks passion, or even a sense of inspired fun; it is as if the filmmakers were dutifully honoring business commitments. Wading through...
That's when Prince of Thieves finally jolts awake. Robin orchestrates a cunning climactic assault, the Merry Men's arrows sizzle through the sky like happy Scuds, and the bustle of bodies and cameras produces congenial movie movement. Two of the actors carry this larkish spirit throughout the film. Geraldine McEwan, in devil-doll weeds, makes for a hilariously desiccated witch. And Alan Rickman, fairly drooling with delight at his own wickedness, plays the Sheriff of Nottingham as a vibrant cartoon villain: Snidely Whiplash rampant...
...leads -- Costner, Mastrantonio, Christian Slater as Will Scarlet, Micheal McShane as Friar Tuck, Morgan Freeman as a Moor displaced in Nottingham -- are all American, intoning flat varieties of American English. They sound like tourists stranded in Sherwood Forest. And they inadvertently give a new meaning to the story: now Robin and his band are vagrant colonials who save England from those who can actually speak the language...