Robin Hood (2010)

Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe team up here for the fifth time to retell a tale that's been told on cinema screens more times than bears counting. It's to their credit then, that this incarnation of Sherwood's favourite outlaw doesn't remotely suffer from a sense of deja vu. This Robin, who is not a man you'd catch dead in bright green tights, is Robin Longstride, a scruffy archer in the crusades of Richard The Lionheart. During his return to Merry England, a series of coincidences leads to Robin the archer impersonating the freshly killed Sir Robert Loxley, late husband of Marian (Cate Blanchett), who had been charged with bringing the news of King Richard's death to the Royal Court. It's all surprisingly convoluted for a film that is at its finest when delivering visceral wham-bam battle sequences.

Although the plot plays around with various historical happenings, we're dealing with the kind of revisionist epic that dispenses with the "verily thou cometh" style of dialogue we traditionally associate with medieval period drama. Instead scriptwriter Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential) essays a style that sees Will Scarlett congratulate Robin on his good fortune with Marian via a hearty "good work!". You half expect him to add "go on my son" for good measure. For the most part, this approach works nicely and is sometimes very funny, although there are moments when it all teeters precariously on the brink of a Carling "You know who your mates are" advert and risks making New Lads out of the Merry Men.

Very much bang on target are the actors' performances in both lead and supporting roles. Mark Addy is good value as mead-swigging Friar Tuck, Danny Huston suitably non-saintly as a realistic Richard Lionheart (with just a whisper of Brian Blessed's Blackadder version in the mix), while Oscar Isaac (Agora) is a standout as effete shagger Prince/King John, played as less evil overlord and more spoiled playboy. His demands for more taxes evoke a greedy premiership player who feels he's being short-changed on 100k a week, which works splendidly.

The leading players also throw themselves into Scott's stylishly grubby Olde England with relish, particularly Mark Strong, giving his cold-bloodedly duplicitous all as a character named Godfrey, whose turncoat machinations facilitate an invasion from France. Sadly, he's marooned in the problematic final act by a script which doesn't appear to know what do with this character, having decided to focus on the invading Gallic army as the principle threat.

And what of the man in the title? Basically, Big Russ re-runs a less vengeance-driven version of consummate fighting machine and speechmaker Maximus from Gladiator, which is no bad thing. This time, he's an opportunistic and prescient champion of social justice, who will have his Magna Carta, in this life or the next. The film's biggest surprise is probably the weight given to Robin and various northern barons banding together to demand a power-sharing treaty with King John - shades of Phantom Menace's infamous tax disputes here perhaps, and certainly not the sexy rough and tumble in the greensward one might expect from a chap most memorably incarnated by legendary swordsman Errol Flynn. Indeed, despite a few concessionary shots of sweaty tavern wenches, this is an oddly lust-free vision of Robin's life, especially so far as the central couple go - Crowe and Blanchett are both fine actors but have little sexual chemistry together.

Part of the reason for this is the way the much-needed reworking of Marian's character has been handled. No-one would argue that she needed reworking, but I'm not sure they get it quite right, though you can see what they were going for. This Marian has had to look after her husband's estate while he's off enjoying a nice spot of marauding through the Holy Lands in the name of god - she's been tilling fields, cleaning horses hooves, firing flaming arrows at the departing backs of robbers; she is, in short, every inch a modern woman. This is fine and makes sense, but starts to feel stretched when she pops up like Eowyn from Lord Of The Rings on the battlefield and proceeds flail a sword about. Kudos to them for the experiment, but it takes us out of the scene and into wondering where she got her armour from and who's been teaching her to swordfight. Perhaps an explicatory scene got cut; it feels like it. And after various mentions of living alone for ten years, a "short but sweet" wedding night a decade ago, and the small matter of Robin and Marian declaring their love for one another, was it too much to expect the pair of them to get busy at some point? Apparently so.

Neither the bullseye one might hope or the complete misfire some feared, the first third of this ambitious epic is stirring, superbly realised stuff, but an anti-climactic finish and certain lack of sizzle mean that the Robin Hood to beat is still BBC children's television production 'Maid Marian And Her Merry Men'.