Ridley Scott's Robin Hood

[The Ween]

It's the title that gets me. It sounds like one of those grocery store romance novels.

Christian Slater was only 21 in this movie but his acting, and his accent, were better than Kevin Costner's.

Still liked it though.

 

[Maglor]

Costner is completly incapable of doing any accent other than his own.

 

[tylerdurden]

I think the battle scene at the end is completely justified, given how it is set up throughout the progress of the film. And to support that point, one of the characters (John Hurt's character) exists pretty much solely as a source of exposition for the audience. He's a pretty flat character otherwise when he's not talking about the looming French oppressors.

actually, what i meant was that the battle scene at the end was justified only by setting up the subplot about the french invaders. it's almost as if ridley scott/brian helgeland suddenly had an inspiration to do a medievel beach-storming sequence ala saving private ryan, and therefore needed to retrofit this elaborate subplot about the french trying to weaken the english via in-fighting so they could easily conquer them.

and to me, it was an additional layer just to give robin's backstory a larger canvas and a nationalistic context, rather than the character he's always been known for in folklore, which is the champion against local government tyranny and corruption. it felt like a needless revision to the legend and one that was shoehorned in more for the sake of having a bombastic international-scale battle.

The battle at the end was to set up how much the new King was a liar and would go back to his tax heavy ways. He made promises he didn't keep.

to me, the snaky, lying king john aspect could've just as easily been portrayed if they'd stuck to the taxation plot, and the king's eventual dismissal of the proposed charter of rights. they didn't need to show him pretending to lead the english into battle against the french only to screw them over later. removing that layer would've kept the story much tighter and more focused, and therefore would've prevented that overlong, bloated feel that the film had.

just my 2 cents'.