And then I sat through this thing.
The first act is what I'd hoped for. Robin Hood is an amoral outlaw and knows it. He's old. He's now dealing with his victims' families out hunting him. And he's amorally killing them as they do. I will admit that I found the level of gore in this part gratuitous but I'm generally against gratuitous gore so it's not unique here. Fighting at the time wasn't heroic at all and it got ugly. I was honestly pleased.
And then the rest of the movie happened.
We go from a tired but still vital Robin Hood to a sad, tired Robin Hood. Unfortunately, we get two full hours of sad, tired Robin Hood.
What we also get is lots of Hugh Jackman close up face shots. Full on and then from the left 3/4 profile so he can do the eyebrow lift-side eye that he's done for decades. I'm serious here. I'd be tempted to see it again (A-List) and use a stopwatch to get how much of the runtime is just him and the camera. We also get a nekkid HJ where he's crouched down so you get the full side view. Is it in his contract that he has to be nekkid? Does the studio put it in there? Does he?
After the bait-and-switch first act what we get is a very slow movie building towards an undeserved redemption arc. I guess the director said they left it ambiguous if Robin Hood gets the arc or not but it's more the difference of a sledgehammer or two-by-four hitting you with the answer. It's there. It's very much there. And it wasn't earned.
The slow bits have him being (slowly) taken to some church on an island to be healed. I don't know what it is with having these remote locations for communities that need more than they have to sustain themselves. Sure, they show that there's gardens, orchards, and game there but honestly the number of people shown vs the size of the island means it ain't gonna fly. But it's there.
The slow part is the insistence on showing the scenery. Yes. It's wild country. Yes. There's fog. It's most likely supposed to be somewhere in northern England/Scotland given the number of people with red hair but it's never stated. Not that it matters. There's so much scenery. Oh. And the water around the island. There's a lot of that too. All this is accompanied by so much Celtic music.
Robin Hood is severely injured as part of the arc of helping Little John recover his farm, wife, and daughter. He got the farm, wife, and daughter by killing the man who was supposed to get the farm and then living there to marry and breed. The murdered man's family comes back, runs him off, and keeps his wife and daughter. He finds Robin Hood to help him get it back.
Robin Hood is far more grounded and reminds Little John that it wasn't his life to begin with but is convinced when Little John rhapsodizes about his wife. At no point does he mention the daughter, by the way. The two of them do get the farm back but the kid that Robin Hood shot through the head (yep) survived having the arrow through his skull and out his eye (gratuitous) ends up walking back to his family's farm muttering and then conveniently dying. The family patriarch suits up and leads the family to finish the job.
In that battle Robin Hood is stabbed multiple times in the upper right back and then pretty well pounded with a mace. He'd be dead if Little John hadn't killed the other guy before he could give the coup de gras. He's the one who knows of the whatever place that has "healing magic" and takes Robin Hood on a (slow) journey there. At some point on the road he cauterizes the stab wounds with his dagger (gratuitous and slow). There's a convenient boat that he rows across the channel to drag Robin Hood to the doorstep and leave there.
Once he's there the top whoever woman does his healing. They place him in a room that quite frankly should be at least five rooms but hey, big open airy room with a single bed by the window. He wakes up perfectly clean wearing and laying on white linen. Um. No? There's no way on freaking earth that he'd be that clean with shining clean hair. Especially if he's supposed to have been unconscious.
They've splinted his broken leg. Good. His stab wounds had been cauterized on the road. Good enough. They're using bloodletting for healing. Accurate. Robin Hood not dying of internal injuries. So bad, but we'll leave that aside for later.
The rest of the movie is him moping around the island and having slow conversations with the whatever woman who runs the place. It's a vaguely religious place and religion is touched on but it isn't a driving factor. Maybe there's supposed to be some subtext about him repenting. In the first act he says he never prays. The whatever woman prays for him as soon as he wakes up. She keeps sprinkling religion pellets into the scenes but it isn't too bad.
Robin Hood (Randolph I guess is his given name) spends his time healing, regaining his strength, and doing things like trapping rabbits. The whoever she is asked what his skills were and when she suggested the orchard he was offended and talked about hunting and trapping. Her parting shot (ha ha) was to tell him he was working in the orchard. Note - he never worked in the orchard but we get to see him making himself an arrow so there's that.
On the island is a man completely wrapped in linen with a metal nosepiece. He's a leper who's taken refuge. Now if you know anything about history lepers were outcasts and anyone who came in contact with them were outcasts too. But this guy is the one who takes the boat out every day, I guess looking for people who wanted to come to the island, so whatever. He kind of befriends Robin Hood by being well spoken and unthreatening.
Next on the agenda is Little John's daughter showing up on the island. Cue the emotional bonding nonsense. She's traumatized and runs away (still on the island). Robin Hood finds her in a cavern alcove that has a raised part in the center and candles. She trusts him, only having seen him once in her life and that's when she watched her mother get murdered, and he's the one she clings to. Robin Hood takes her under his wing.
Another kid shows up after having been attacked on the road. There's much foreshadowing in how he looks at the girl. So much foreshadowing. Robin Hood notices and rather than tell anyone he keeps an eye on the situation. That's kind of a joke because the kid lost an eye, which is why he's there. Although there's nothing special being done to him - stitch it up, cover it, hope it doesn't get infected.
This all takes place slowly, of course. Lots of scenes of kids that are never explained playing and working. Very few other adults. The whoever she is leaves off her headcovering early on to show short cut hair that's kind of a perfect bob with a bit of bangs. I won't get into how her hair should have been chopped off in hunks instead of a perfectly clean and smooth flattering face framing hairstyle.
There's not much else to tell of the time on the island. Lots of scenes showing it's an idyllic world removed from the harshness of the real one. Woo.
Robin Hood takes the boy to the shore, tells him about the logistical problems of killing and how families tend to take that badly, and gives him one chance to leave or Robin Hood will kill him. There's a whole morality lesson here where I guess you're supposed to see how terrible Robin Hood's life is because of the consequences of his actions and how he doesn't really care anymore.
The kid runs off, he rows back to the island, and the finale creaks into motion.
The leper guy is dying and wants to talk to Robin Hood. He's figured out who he is and asks if he remembers one of the stories. He doesn't. Turns out the guy in the story is the leper. Gasp. He makes Robin promise to never tell whoever she is his name because it turns out he killed her "beloved". Then he dies.
Of course the first thing he does when he gets back to the island is tell her who he really is. Even though she's been done with the bloodletting for a long time she shows up in his room with the bowl and nipper. She tells him how terrible it was when she found what was left of her husband in the house where Robin Hood had barred him in before setting it on fire. And that he'd been wrapped around their children. Then she nips one of the (Hugh Jackman Prominent Veinstm) to do the bloodletting, but this time she lets it go longer and when she reaches for the bandages he pushes them away.
OK. Robin Hood is finally going to die. Took them long enough to get there, right?
Earlier on there's a bit where the whoever she is says she didn't do what Robin Hood asked when he arrived. She apologizes for not letting him die. That's in the trailers too. I'm kind of disappointed neither one of them brought it up at this point in the story.
The daughter is there and he gives her the bow he'd promised he'd make for her. He has her nock an arrow and aim out the window. He'll tell her when to loose it. This is so drawn out as he bleeds to death. He tells her, she releases the arrow, done.
Now I get to rant! Well, rant more than I already did.
Slipping into my costumer role for a moment. The fabrics were pretty much period appropriate except for the perfectly even dye jobs. And that the daughter had fancy white embroidery around the neck of her dress even though the family lived in a tiny farm house that had a small stable open to the living area. A lot of the clothing had the seams to the outside and fraying. Not really a way to make them last. The whoever she was always used fresh clean white linen bandages when she wrapped him up after bloodletting. Nope. Selvedge edges and reuse. Those things would have been stained all to heck.
There's no way Robin Hood didn't succumb to internal injuries. The stabs would have gotten his kidney and intestines. The made definitely broke ribs and probably splintered them. He'd have had a collapsed lung. The broken leg was fine. That man was dead, however.
Bloodletting is a nick on a vein. It lets out some blood but then closes up. It closes up faster with a bandage and pressure but it closes up. There's no way he would have bled to death from that little wound. To do that requires a .. um .. probably best not to say the best way to slit someone's wrists.
If they'd tightened up the timeline and had him die of his injuries as they festered it would have given more of a sense of urgency for him to achieve whatever it was he wanted to achieve before dying. Setting a clock always puts in urgency. There was none of it here. He was tired, he imparted a life lesson on a kid who may or may not have taken it, he saved the girl's life if the kid didn't decide to come back, then he chose to die.
There's a nonsensical scene where whoever-she-is was in that same cavern where he found the girl. She's lit the candles, did a sage smudge, and is praying to whatever she sees through the hole in the roof. He spies on her there. I guess that's the island healing magic.
Candles! So many candles! That's not happening. Candles are expensive. If anything there would have been oil and rush lamps with the candles reserved for the religion stuff. They wouldn't have them burning in empty rooms. I so dislike that stuff.
Anyway. If you can't tell I didn't like this movie. I was disappointed in this movie. They started out so well and then literally wasted it after establishing that Robin Hood is A Bad Guy. I'm fine with long movies as long as they're long for a purpose. This one could have dropped probably near an hour and still not lost anything of note.
The non-paid reviews are coming in and they're not good. The things I wrote about are in most of them. The agreement is that it's too long and it's quite frankly boring after that first act. But hey, if you like looking at Hugh Jackman in a long grey wig and beard then you can keep yourself awake with that.
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