Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Starring: Kevin Costner, Alan Rickman, Mary Elizabeth Mastradonio, Christian Slater
Primary genre: Action
Secondary genre: Adventure
Nominated for: Best original song
Coming hot from his (over-rated) Oscar winning success “Dances with Wolves” (1990), Kevin Costner was riding a high ego and in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” released a year later it shows. Fondly remembered for Alan Rickman’s hilariously camp and OTT performance as the devil worshipper(!) Sheriff of Nottingham, this big budget adaptation of the famous British folk tale that ventures towards the realm of “realistic” medievalism was a big hit.
However, a retrospective look will reveal a wildly inconsistent tone, uneven pacing and scenes stitched up together in the last minute. Rumor has it that director Kevin Reynolds was prevented from the editing process due to Costner’s egocentrism resulting in a mismatch material where supporting characters have barely any depth mostly reacting to things on the spot and unaffecting the outcome of the story; a significant reveal in the second half means absolutely nothing which begs the question of why including it in the first place. Imagine how bad things are things are when your protagonist is the most well known archer of all time (excluding Apollo) and the film does not bother to show why. One day Robin uses a sword, the next one a bow and suddenly he is a wizard.
“Prince of Thieves” feels like three films blended together torn between a swashbuckling adventure, a cheesy romance and a medieval epic with Reynolds being incapable of maintaining a uniformity across a two hour running time. Surprisingly graphic violence (it received peculiar PG-13 rating!) comes in stark contrast with modern witticisms that undercut the proceedings before Marvel jokes were a thing while the turbulent socio-political situation in the 12th century England and its pointless crusades were visually hinted but nonetheless abandoned in favor of a merry escapade.
“I will cut out your heart with a spoon!“
-Sheriff of Nottingham
Speaking of action, this supposedly $55 million dollar epic has nothing exciting to go for it except some minor explosions in its rather anti-climatic finale and a half way through forest skirmish that is chaotically shot. Do not expect here any solid duels or exciting set pieces besides some banal sword swinging and obvious stunt doubles.
Filled with several distracting visual and verbal anachronisms, unauthentic accents, ridiculous haircuts and terrible geographical, linguistical, and social climate errors, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” is best viewed as an adult school play. Besides Rickman (who would feel right at home in an “Inspector Gadget” episode and having no more than 20 minutes of screentime), everyone is on autopilot and Costner’s Robin in particular lacks a substantiating amount of charisma and conviction in his limited action scenes for a leading man sharing no chemistry with Mary Elizabeth Mastradonio’s Lady Marian. The cast has no material that can be used to elicit any form of emotional response teleporting from random scene to random scene without establishing any concrete or solid motivations and only Morgan Freeman escapes with his dignity intact.
“Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” I suppose was the right film in the right moment capturing a cinematic zeitgeist; an Oscar nominated song, a famous and handsome leading man, a welcome cameo, a solid cast. Seeing it after all these years though demonstrated how poorly it has aged against more serious, gritty and visceral epics that take some of the individual elements presented here to provide a more consistent picture of the period setting (e.g., “Braveheart” (1995), “The Messenger” (1999) ,“Kingdom of Heaven” (2005)).
Uneven and poor adaptation of the classic folk tale
+Solid cast
+Violence
+Rickman is entertaining
-Wildly uneven tone
-Anachronisms at every sector
-Blunt lead
-Cheesy and boring romance
-Story feels like it is being stitched up at the last minute