Ridley Scott Hates America

Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" is dreadful.

Part of me wants to just leave it at that, and move on with my day. "Red Dead Redemption" is released tomorrow, and I'd like to squeeze in a screening of "Once Upon A Time In The West" today, to help get me in the mood.

But if you've read this blog before (and I'm sure you haven't), then you know that I never leave it at that. For better or worse, I am going to ramble. You have been warned.

A quick recap of the film's plot is in order:

Robin Longstride is an archer in King Richard the Lionheart's army. Fighting their way across France en route to England after the third Crusade, Richard is killed in battle by some French peasant with a crossbow. Richard's right-hand man, Sir Robert Loxley, rides off to deliver the Crown of England to Richard's brother, Prince John, but is ambushed by an English traitor in league with the King of France.

Longstride and his army buddies Little John, Will Scarlet, and The Other Guy, fight off the French soldiers. Robin wounds the English traitor, Sir Godfrey, from afar with an arrow, giving him JokerFace.

Dying, Loxley tells Longstride to return his family sword to his aged father, apparently forgetting completely about the Crown of England. Longstride agrees, then he and his men promptly steal everything belonging to Loxley and his men, deciding to pass themselves off as noblemen to gain passage to England.

Returning to their homeland, Longstride travels to Nottingham to return Sir Robert's sword to his Daddy, and Daddy gets Longstride to agree to pretend to be his son, in order for Sir Robert's widow, Marion, to retain the Loxley estate after Daddy kicks the bucket. Longstride takes Daddy Loxley up on his offer, and hijinks ensue.

There's obviously a lot more to the story, the previous four paragraphs describing maybe the first 30 minutes of the plot.

Godfrey knows that Longstride is not the real Sir Robert, and Longstride knows that Godfrey is a bald traitor with a wonky face scar. The new King John is a bankrupt douchebag who likes to sleep around on his wife, so I gave him the clever nickname of Broke-Dick John. The King of France is planning an invasion of the now-vulnerable England with the help of Sir Godfrey, unbeknownst to Broke-Dick John.

There's a scene around the film's halfway point where Daddy Loxley, who knew Longstride's father, tells him about the man he never knew. He does this through what I can best describe as a psychic vision. I don't know what else to call it.

It's utterly bizarre. Loxley says that he's going to tell Longstride about his father, then Longstride starts to have these seemingly painful psychic flashes, involving a monument with twin father-and-son handprints hidden underneath a stone, his father's execution by some evil dude, and a terrible "deep" family motto: Rise And Rise Again, Until Lambs Become Lions.

I know that phrase is supposed to have deep signifigance, but it just sounds ridiculous, to me. I would have just chiseled "Never Give Up" into the stone. It's more succinct, and it gets the same job done.

Anyway, the psychic vision passes, and Loxley starts rambling about Longstride's idealistic father, calling him "a visionary" who wrote a charter that would give more power to the people of England. He then shows Longstride this charter.

Robin Longstride's father wrote the fucking Magna Carta.

That was the point of the film where I just cracked. I began laughing, and laughing, and laughing. I couldn't stop. It wasn't necessarily that funny to me, I just couldn't control myself. Robin Longstride's father wrote the fucking Magna Carta?!? Are you fucking kidding me?!

So we have Robin Longstride's father to thank for Habeas Corpus.

After that moment in the movie, I completely checked out of the narrative. To be fair, the mediocre story thus far was barely holding my interest, but the Magna Carta bullshit was the last straw.

Consequently, I don't remember a fucking thing about this movie from the Magna Carta reveal to the big final battle between King John's army and the invading French soldiers. My brain just went on stand-by mode for 40 minutes. And when I finally came to my senses, I wasn't rewarded with anything worthwhile.

Longstride rides into battle with King John and William Hurt, fighting the King of France's men on a dreary beach. Inexplicably, Marion shows up on horseback, in full armor, with the fucking Lost Boys, who are all riding ponies and wearing shitty halloween masks.

At that moment, I felt my sanity slipping away. What the fuck was going on? A gaggle of feral children on galloping ponies, killing French soldiers? Marion dressed up like a knight, trying to fight Sir Godfrey in the water? What was I watching? What had I gotten myself into?

I kept expecting that crazy feral kid from "The Road Warrior" to toss a razor-sharp boomerang at somebody. It wouldn't have been any weirder than what was unfolding onscreen.

Long story short, Longstride kills some dudes with a war hammer, battles Godfrey, saves Marion, and carries her off to safety, eventually killing Godfrey with an arrow at long range, redeeming himself for his botched shot at the beginning of the film.

King John, who had previously agreed to sign the Magna Carta, instead burns it in a public forum, then declares Robin Longstride to be "an OUTLAAAAAAAAW!!!!!", putting a price on his head, and Longstride sets up shop in Sherwood Forest with his Merry Men, Marion, and the Lost Boys.

"And so the legend begins..." Fade to black.

I stood up, looked at my brother, and yelled "Fuck this movie". That's all I could say. Fuck this movie. It has no reason to exist. It's got too many problems, chief among them being...

This is not a Robin Hood movie.

Dear Imaginary Reader, let me tell you a story. A story about a script called "Nottingham", written by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris.

"Nottingham" was the story of Philip Mark, the Sheriff of Nottingham, a decent man forced by his King to raise local taxes to intolerable levels, arousing the ire of the common people.

Enter Robin Hood, a petty thief and outlaw, stealing from nobles and periodically handing out a small fraction of his ill-gotten gains to the peasants, who admire him as much as they hate the Sheriff, the personification of King John's greed.

The story was an interesting subversion of the Robin Hood legend, painting the outlaw as a shrewd criminal with little to no concern for the downtrodden people of Nottingham, and the Sheriff as a good, upstanding man forced into an impossible position by his sovereign.

I'm not sure if the screenwriters based their story on the Richard Kluger novel, "The Sheriff Of Nottingham", which has a similar plot, or they came up with it themselves. Either way, when it was announced that the "Nottingham" script would be made into a film by Ridley Scott, I was up for it.

Some time later, I read numerous stories on Internet about how Scott and attached star Russell Crowe were dissatisfied with the current story, and they brought Brian Helgeland onboard for rewrites.

New plot details began to circulate. Instead of the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood being separate entities, the Sheriff, upset with King John's unbearable taxation, adopts the alter-ego of outlaw Robin Hood to redistribute the wealth of the pompous nobles, performing a task he publicly condemns in his official capacity as Sheriff.

Now I loved that idea. The hated Sheriff of Nottingham leading a secret double life as an outlaw beloved by the common people, becoming their secret champion while maintaining his public face as King John's lackey. That was a cool idea, and I could roll with it.

Apparently, that idea just wasn't good enough for Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe, so they told Brian Helgeland to cannibalize his script for "A Knight's Tale", adding a subplot of political intrigue involving the foundation of the Magna Carta, and completely ignoring the actual Robin Hood legend until the final five minutes of the fucking film.

This movie should not have been called "Robin Hood". It should have been called "Longstride". As a Robin Hood story, it fails conclusively.

It also fails as entertainment. The story as told is mediocre at best. The cinematography is muddy and uninteresting. Russell Crowe has absolutely no chemistry with Cate Blanchett, which is a huge problem considering their characters are supposed to be very much in love by the end of the film.

And Russell Crowe is just too old to play Robin Hood, especially a Robin Hood before he becomes "Robin Hood". This is his origin story, and Russell Crowe is 47 years old. Considering the film's pretty strict adherence to realism and historical accuracy, this is a large misstep.

And it's not like Russell Crowe looks like a younger man. He looks 47. That's not a bad thing. He's just too fucking old to play Robin Hood.

I read a story a few days ago about a BBC interview with Russell Crowe. The interviewer told Crowe that he detected a hint of an Irish accent in the actor's performance in "Robin Hood", and Crowe just walked out on the interview.

I saw the film. I also detected a hint of an Irish accent in Russell Crowe's performance. It was slightly off-putting.

Cate Blanchett doesn't really bring anything to her role, which surprised me. She's a damn fine actress, but her Marion is just part of the set decoration. Completely unremarkable. I did think it was amusing when she shows up at the end in armor, ready to fight the French bastards, only to fall on her back in the water, rocking back and forth like a turtle on the highway.

Very empowering.

Danny Huston bores his way through his small role as King Richard the Beard. I used to like Huston, but over the past several years I have grown to hate him thanks to a series of terrible performances. I no longer look forward to seeing this man in a film. Instead, I am filled with a mild sense of unease.

Mark Strong shows up in his third villainous role in six months as Sir Godfrey the Wide Mouth. He's bald, and he speaks French. He's not bad in his role, but he's far from memorable.

Kevin Durand, who I like, doesn't embarass himself as Little John. Scott Grimes, who annoyed me on "ER", did not annoy me as Will Scarlet. Max Von Sydow does a fine job as Sir Walter Loxley. Mark Addy, who I loved in "The Full Monty", doesn't get much to do as Friar Tuck, but he's always entertaining when he's onscreen.

William Hurt plays the Earl of Pembroke, and his English accent is just as inconsistent as Kevin Costner's in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". He doesn't really do a fucking thing in the film, but I appreciated him when he appeared.

Oscar Isaac sucks as Prince/King John. He's just a scenery-chewing, melodramatic asshole.

One thing about this film that truly bothered me was the text. At the beginning of the film, we're treated to three screens of text that try to set up the world of the film, and it's all completely unnecessary. There's nothing in that text that a viewer with an IQ above 30 could not readily discern from the narrative in their own time.

And during the film we are constantly bombarded with text identifying the locations in the film. It's insulting. We have to be told that we're in London, that we're in Nottingham, that we're in France. Once again, any person with a functioning brain can figure out where our characters are simply by watching the film and paying the slightest attention to what's going on.

Longstride flat-out tells his men that they need to head for the coast of France to catch a boat across the channel to England. Two minutes later, our heroes arrive on the coast of France, with a boat waiting for them... and the filmmakers assume that without a helpful caption stating "The Coast Of France" onscreen, we would have no fucking idea where these characters are.

We're told that what's currently onscreen is the Earl of Pembroke's house, thirty seconds after we see William Hurt in his fucking house!

Ridley Scott thinks we're all drooling retards. And he made a drooling, retarded movie.

Fuck this move.