Posted on June 11, 2010

(Richard Warren Field is the author of the award-winning novel, The Swords of Faith. Read here why The Swords of Faith will make a great movie.)

Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” is actually a prequel, a proposal of a possible origin story for what became the Robin Hood legend. Moviegoers should be aware of two points up front. First, they should not expect to see Robin and his Merry Men sallying forth from the forest to battle the evil Sheriff of Nottingham as they steal from the rich and give to the poor. The Sheriff of Nottingham is not much more than a bit player, comic relief at one point. And second, if a complete disregard for accurate history is something that offends their sensibilities, moviegoers should avoid this movie.

But let’s accept that Ridley Scott takes liberties with history, and uses a rough impression of history to stage great action spectacles. This is another movie from that mold.

(Click here for a detailed synopsis. Do not click this link if you have not seen the movie!)

What we have here is a creative prequel to the Robin Hood legend. The action, as we expect from Ridley Scott, is riveting. Arrows whisk through the air. The sounds and sights of life-and-death battles for survival pummel the audience with visceral immediacy. The actors are top name performers who portray their characters effectively. The villains are truly evil, and the heroes are magnanimous and egalitarian even when holding higher stations of rank.

In short, this is great entertainment if we don’t look too hard. Though the actors are effective, most of the characters are one-dimensional. Robin Hood certainly undergoes a personal discovery that transforms him to a more serious, ambitious-to-do-good person. But, from the beginning he is depicted as a basically honest man, a good guy trying to function in a brutal world populated by people of lesser morality.

Leaving aside historical issues, the story relies too much on contrived coincidence. Robin and his men happen to arrive at just in time to ambush the ambushers of the squad carrying King Richard’s crown. Robin happens to arrive at the gathering of nobles just in time to insert his speech in favor of the charter that will unify the English to take on the French invasion fleet. Then, Robin’s men arrive back in Nottingham just in time to thwart Godfrey’s attack on the city.

We also have a hint of thieves in the forest, thieves who will join forces with Robin Hood after the movie’s story. But this entire aspect is underdeveloped, probably due to lack of time.

Involved in “not looking too hard” is the problem of popping around England from Nottingham to the coast and other locations separated by over a hundred miles. There are also the landing craft at the beach that look like World War II troop transports. And there is the apparent battlefield conversion of the common archer Robin into an expert swordsman at the battle at the beach.

If we do want to look a little harder and ask about the history, we realize history takes a real beating. I’ll mention two glaring historical problems:

• Richard is somehow returning to England from the Crusades at the time of the story while pillaging through France. In fact, when Richard was killed at Chậlus Castle, he already had been back to England after being ransomed. He was in France to recover territories taken from his empire by King Philip while Richard was absent during the Third Crusade. Richard also did not die immediately; the wound he suffered became infected and he died over a period of days. His mother Eleanor was at his side and heard his acknowledgement of John as his successor.

• The French at this time did not mount any sort of invasion across the channel. Huge areas in France remained part of the Plantagenet Dynasty’s empire. Philip’s preoccupation was with gaining French territory (he did end up taking huge areas from John after Richard’s death), not with invading England.

The historical reference to the massacre at Acre is a particularly poignant moment in the film, and true to history. If a decent human being, like the Robin character, was asked about Richard’s Third Crusade, and whether God would approve, the Acre massacre of nearly three thousand men, women and children would have weighed on his conscience. And, Richard’s response, that Robin’s stated opinion about the massacre was naive, also rings true. Richard made a cold-blooded military decision to kill the Acre prisoners he was holding for ransom when he suspected Saladin of delaying payment of the ransom to delay Richard’s move down the coast to Jerusalem. That is no excuse for the atrocity, but Richard’s response in the film is consistent with how he no doubt felt about the action.

So, if you can check plausibility and historical accuracy at the door, and ignore some of the story problems, you will enjoy another rousing Ridley Scott bash-and-gash, arrows-hissing, hitting-and-missing, good-guys-win, bad-guys-lose epic. Good guilty-pleasure type fun, but we hope not too many are getting their history from it.

Richard Warren Field is the author of the upcoming novel, The Swords of Faith. For more information, go to RichardWarrenField.com.