REVIEW: Robin Hood hopes to rob from the rich box office to give to the poor moviegoers in another faceless fable of the classic cad
Well, another reimagining of the high-wire exploits concerning Robin of Loxley is served up on a derivative dish this Thanksgiving holiday in director Otto Bathurst's high-octane turkey Robin Hood. Vastly messy and meandering in its whimsical wasteland, Bathurst's boisterous actioner based on the charismatic English folklore cad is ushered on the big screen in the form of an empty-minded throbbing thriller riddled with exhaustive battle scenes, misplaced techno-turbulence special effects, and a woefully labored sense of flashy adventure attached to a familiar and tiring legendary story. Relentlessly protruding and pointless, Robin Hood is nothing more than an excitable retread of a stale narrative told countless times before.
Bathurst's solution to amp up the 14th-century anti-hero's freshness and relevance by conveniently saturating his profile in a modern-day 21st-century splashy action flick feels profoundly desperate as it panders to the twitchy movie-going masses. Nevertheless, repackaging the jumpy Robin Hood as a rollicking action-adventure cannot erase how tediously conceived this so-called period piece is in cockeyed conception. Routinely laced with sophomoric dialogue, exaggerated action-packed sequences, paper-thin cynicism, and cardboard costumed characterizations Robin Hood's ultimate payoff never really amounts to much despite the adrenaline-driven drivel it lazily promotes. One would ask wondering what was the sole purpose for regurgitating the nostalgic, well-meaning scoundrel in a misplaced spectacle better suited for the Divergent movie series crowd?
Clearly, Bathurst and screenwriters Ben Chandler and David James Kelly were trying to fortify their colorful version of Robin Hood by giving it a frenetic facelift in hopes of giving eye-popping stimulation to the age-old tale of the mischievous lad and his band of merry-minded minions out to settle the score towards the corruptible authority. While it is a commendable intent to bring a hair-raising, hedonistic approach to the Robin Hood brand in a cinematic age where larger-than-life action-oriented genres such as superhero and spy flicks dominate the blockbuster sweepstakes Bathurst's peppered product is utterly charmless. Therefore, Robin Hood awkwardly strains for credibility in biting off more than it can chew in a toothless bombastic actioner that has all the appeal of a dull arrow penetrating a stone wall.
Taron Egerton's Robin Hood is not the traditional English outlaw that we have all come to know and cherish throughout his literary reputation. Through Bathurst's congested eyes he is more of an impish hipster with Egerton's showy Kingsman-esque styled grit. In any event, we get a sensationalistic Robin Hood chilling out in a dystopian den that is Sherwood Forest...a setting that resembles more of an expansive Mad Max backlot than that of a scenic sight of massive lush greenery. In any event, Robin of Loxley is tasked with combating the Arabs in the crusades. This is where Robin meets foe Yahya--soon to his colleague Little John (Jamie Foxx) after the adversarial Moor secretly boards the ship back to Robin's home country in England. Soon, the pair trains as they prepare to do extensive battling (highlighted by gimmicky slow-motion arrows and other belabored fight sequences that persist).
Clustered together in a hasty haphazard fashion, Robin Hood is a clunky concoction that never resembles the generated cheeky groove it strives to be at heart. Shamelessly, Bathurst's disjointed actioner is a scattershot project that embarrassingly borrows from other frivolous fares that include Assassins Creed, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, and The Kingsman just to name a few. Bathurst is so busy trying to foster this fidgety fable for awestruck fanboys to embrace that he forgets to address why this forgettable installment of the folksy outlaw was necessary to showcase in the first place. Stillborn and cliched, Robin Hood needs to be pierced with its own errant arrow.
Sadly, the ensemble cast gets lost within this numbing and nonsensical thrill-ride. Egerton tries to incorporate a sense of free-wheeling swagger to his roguish Robin Hood but the ridiculousness of the material negates his breezy efforts. Foxx's Little John barely registers as a mentor/sidekick to Egerton's titular character. Surprisingly, Egerton's Robin ignites no genuine intimacy or insight with ex-love Marian (Eve Hewson, daughter of U2 rocker Bono). As the villainous Sherriff of Nottingham, Ben Mendelsohn brings a sketchy vibe to the proceedings that is not much different from his baddie persona from other superior flicks. Other supporting players such as Jamie Dornan's Will Scarlett and Minchin's Friar Tuck get tangled up in the spotty shuffle of this topsy-turvy tripe.
This new and rambunctious take on Robin Hood may have a penchant for robbing but the audience will definitely feel that their 116 minutes of viewing time was unassumingly stolen.
