Sir Robert Hode (Patrick Bergin) insults the petty Norman lord, Sir Miles Folcanet (Jürgen Prochnow), creating a rift between Robert and Baron Daguerre (Jeroen Krabbé). Robert, renamed Robin Hood, and Will Scarlett (Owen Teale) join with a band of thieves lead by Little John (David Morrissey) and they begin robbing from the rich. Meanwhile, Maid Marian (Uma Thurman), Daguerre’s niece who is engaged to Folcanet against her will, escapes the castle disguised as a boy and joins the men of Sherwood forest.
1991 was the year of the mediocre Robin Hood film. While Kevin Costner’s Prince of Theives got all the notice, this gritty, British entry was generally ignored, and in the U.S., didn’t get a theatrical release. But sometimes a film gets all the attention it deserves, and this one’s rightful place is cable TV.
Director John Irvin (who also had a hand in the pitiful Ghost Story) slows this Swashbuckler to a crawl, if it is a Swashbuckler at all. The fights are plodding and few, and the entire picture is shot in a gray haze, a not-to-subtle metaphor for Britain’s political woes (a concept stolen from Excalibur where such magic makes sense). The production design and direction are for a serious medieval drama, but the characters of Robin and Will are pure frothy Swashbuckler. Light and fluffy, they are impetuous, charming braggarts who belong in a Technicolor fantasy. Tilting the film further away from any connection to reality is Jürgen Prochnow, who has invented a new accent that is supposed to be some kind of Continental French, but isn’t. Prochnow decided (undoubtedly with the aid of Irvin) that Folcanet should be indiscernible from a pit-bull (well, an overacting pit-bull). He growls. He snarls. He even drools a bit. What he doesn’t do is appear as a villain worth more than a snicker.
This not-quite drama/not-quite Swashbuckling adventure also ends up being a not-quite romance. Bergin, with his ’70s porno mustache, and Thurman have no chemistry. They match only in that both are portraying characters that are obviously from the latter half of the 20th century. Thurman’s Marian is a liberated brat, and Bergin…I mentioned the porno thing, right?
There is quite a bit worth saving in Robin Hood. Owen Teale makes an excellent Will Scarlett, and, unlike Thurman, does have chemistry with Bergin, and David Morrissey is an amiable Little John. There’s several mildly amusing gags, an occasionally inspired shot, and some interesting, if minor, twists to the legend. But the filmmakers never decided what kind of a movie they were making, so the enjoyable sections don’t fit together into any kind of a whole.
No matter what kind of flick it should have been, the central struggle needed to be more important. This isn’t a story of a contest between good and evil (as a Swashbuckler would frame it), nor is it a diatribe on class oppression (as would be fitting for a drama). The conflict is nothing but a trivial slap fight between two arrogant friends with hurt feelings. The Norman-Saxon discord is tacked on to give legitimacy to Robin, but is of little importance to the story. It all starts and ends on pride. This is the Legend of Robin Hood, stripped of its stature.
Other Robin Hood Swashbucklers reviewed on this site: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946), Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950), Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), Robin and Marian (1976), and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).