Robin Hood Review

Robin Hood (2018) is the latest take on the character that immediately starts by telling you to just forget the history and lore, to just enjoy this. It's a bit of weird starting point for sure, but does make sense as this has a weird balance of medieval times with modern integrations. This makes a rather strange stylistic world that's carried through the very sleek cinematography. I'm also very serious about the voice over at the start, that is what it says. Almost like they want you to give what you're about to see a break or something. The narrative is rather odd with many elements that make little to no sense. They paint a sort of strange war situation that is like modern times, but all bow based and that's the starting point for revenge.

It's one wronged young lord that's social climbing and in opposition also a thief stealing. Everything here is just go, go, go. There's no breathing room as the entire film is just action. It's rather hilarious as they have training montages and focus on stealth, only for Robin Hood to run out there straight up killing everyone. There's no sense of a heist, it's just run and gun with bows. There are themes of a revolution thrown in there and it doesn't come together as a very cohesive package. It also leaves so many questions while being a puzzling adventure. Not much makes sense and you sort of just need to go with it.

I really liked the way this was shot, thought it was visually neat. They had slow motion, intense destruction and over the top moments. That being said, I could see this being hard for some to follow due to that. A lot of what happened was purely silly; horses being rode across rooftops, bizarre motivations and how fast one's perspective can apparently change. We can't do this without you! Ok, shakes hand.

I can't really mention elements of it as that would spoil the narrative, but the ending just crumbled. It did provide a few laughs while trying to be a rather serious picture. Taron Egerton's charm as Robin of Luxley couldn't even really save this one. You had an all out menacing Ben Mendelsohn as the Sheriff though nothing but shouting to work with there. I found Marian (Eve Hewson) to be someone there to just stare around, John (Jamie Foxx) really didn't seem to care and Will (Jamie Dornan) was just horrible.

The Conclusion

Robin Hood (2018) is one jumbled and awkward mess that presents modern elements while attempting to be medieval with there being too much of a clash. It wasn't all bad, some of the action was exciting at times and I liked how the cinematography was presented. They had a nice gritty style and injury was present with that. Things just mostly made little to no sense with character motivations being beyond puzzling.

This wasn't at all any sort of heist or theft movie, just a guy with a hood running around killing people frantically. I also truly do wonder where these peasants, that had nothing were getting these authentic hoods to plaster around. Must be a natural resource in the land I suppose. Robin Hood looks cool, it has a strong lead but there's nothing there to make this interesting or even that good.

Robin Hood Review at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by Entertainment One

Rating Overall: 5.0