Author of The Healer and Knight Haralde.
The legend that is Robin Hood has been shape-shifted through the centuries by writers, television and movies and we have loved this lone bandit in all his guises. Many have cast their own vision of this solitary man and his band of few and we have on the whole have been entertained by his cause célèbre, to rob from the rich and give to the poor. Russell Crowe and his favorite director, Ridley Scott, have now cast their 21st Century vision and the only robbing of the rich in this movie was the money you plunked down to get in only to be disappointed by their counterfeit version.
Like the movie, this Robin Hood is an imposter. He is Robin Longstride who assumes the identity of one Robert of Locksley, one of King Richard the Lionheart’s chief lieutenants. The movie opens with Richard, newly back from his failed Crusade in the Holy Land, laying siege to a French castle, one that had sworn fealty to him originally, then rebelled during his absence. He is killed (historically correct) and the same fate soon befalls Locksley. Longstride, a peasant warrior in the king’s army, assumes Locksley’s identity in order to return the nobleman’s sword back to his fiefdom in England’s Sherwood Forest.
The beginning is excellent. The costumes, the customs, the village poor life are very authentic. It is the best part of the movie. You have to give Scott his due here, as a scholar and cinematographer. He is crack on exciting when he attempts to draw you into his medieval world. I got lost in the atmosphere. It was thrilling; how close it was to my imaginings of those times. Robin is adopted as the new lord of Locksley. However, it turns out this Robin is a great swordsman, a leader of vast armies, a mingler in the upper circles of noblemen and a chaste lover of Maid Marion, the wife of the dead Locksley. There is little of thievery, of the loner and skilled archer and forester at this point.
And from here on in, the legend falls apart. Instead of being in a small cast with a few men teasing and harassing forays by king’s men into his forest citadel, he leads armies, he is surrounded, crowded with warriors and fighters and horses and people. And then there is a final battle scene where Locksley and Marian bump into each other as they both fight to stave off a naval invasion by the king of France (since when did the French king invade England?).
Wait a minute. Isn’t Robin Hood about a solitary runner of the woods in an obscure part of rural England striking the cord of loyalty in the hearts of a few men who band together to fight royal persecution and tax oppression. The legend grows around this power of one because of his single-mindedness to right wrongs with the only skill he had, the longbow. The longbow for us signaled his physical and psychological commitment of his ethics and belief in justice for even the common man.
Crowe and Scott’s Robin Hood only emerges in the final five minutes of the movie when King John declares him an outlaw.
What took them so long? Do you suppose there is a sequel in Robin’s future, one that will allow them to again lift a little money from your purse? If so, let them not tax us again with a middle-aged actor, blowsy in the face who seems bored with the untruth of his betrayal of the great legend of English history.
The Robin Hood review by John Wright is based on speculations about his own Robin character who appears near the end of his novel, The Healer. Rhys of Gwent is regarded by his fellows as the best longbow man in northern Wales. My two protagonists, Haralde Longshield, a Welsh lord, and his Norman brother Riennes de Montford, come upon him poaching deer in what is the Longshield fiefdom. Rhys regards himself to be a free man, and thus adamant that he owes no tax, geld or fealty to Haralde. Haralde begs to differ and demands Rhys submit. Mischevous, cunning, Rhys continues as a runner of the woods to hunt game and feed his two children who roam the forests with him. This tug of war between Rhys and his lord Haralde contiues in the second novel, Knight Haralde, where a secret admiration one for the other begins to develop in the battle of wits between the two. Rhys in Knight Haralde convinces Haralde to hold an archery contest as entertainment for his mother's wedding, and then talks him into putting up three silver coins to invited contestants, prizes he undoutedly will win. The novel takes place following the 1066 invasion of England by William the Conqueror, who sends three powerful warrior Earls up into the Marcher border country between Wales and England to subdue Welsh rebellions.
John Wright is a retired columnist and reporter in Ontario, Canada. He lives with his wife Elaine on the Bruce Peninsula on the shores of Lake Huron.
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