Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10
Cast: Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornan, Tim Minchin, Paul Anderson, F. Murray Abraham, Ian Peck, Cornelius Booth, Kane Headley-Cummings, Scott Greenan, Lara Rossi, Kevin Griffiths, Bjorn Bengtsson, Yasen Atour, Nick Wittman, Josh Herdman.
When you re-imagine the tale, there will always be arrows of derision ready to take aim and fire off volleys of shots of criticism; tampering with a classic is for some beyond acceptable, the story should be sacrosanct, etched in stone and forever told in a way that respects the past, as much as it pays esteem to our memory of it.
In a world that can change details, make additions, alter the inflection of speech and meaning, let alone gender and meaning in the works of Shakespeare, that can bring up to date and make relevant stories such as Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, so to should we expect, as has been shown, transformations to heroes such as King Arthur, and by which demand should we see a new generation of film makers and writers put their own stamp on fabled institutions as Robin Hood.
The beauty of a fabled belief is that you can transpose today’s fears and sentiment to the world in which our ancestors stood, we are under a regime that sees desire in conflict, on waging war on those it has a duty to care for, its people only one small disaster away from demanding revolution, and if that is the case in which we can see a different style of dress and military might portrayed with ease, a world in which a hero rises should perhaps not be constrained by some people’s lack of knowledge, or in other’s imagination.
Whereas the makers of this new version of Robin Hood might have dispensed with the luxury of pre-conceived past ideals in the story, no Lincoln green, no epic meeting between Little John and the returning Crusader, no sign till the end of Sherwood Forest, they also forgot, or chose to ignore any strength of story, no memorable character, and in a film that boasts Taron Egerton in the lead role and Jamie Dornan as support, the lacklustre charm of all made any changes to the legend, in a way, redundant.
We are arguably more bound to the ideal we have in our mind than we are willing to admit to ourselves, no matter the era we come from we see a certain model of performance and we wish it to remain so, perhaps none more so than in the heroes, tangible or myth, we wish to see return, the leaders who are not afraid to take on the evils of establishment.
A film that arguably suffers under the weight of the past, and of one that perhaps wasn’t even asked for yet, Robin Hood may have good intentions, but it does not hit the target at all.
Ian D. Hall