REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:         


ROBIN HOOD PRINCE OF THIEVES

ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES. Warner Brothers, 1991. Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Christian Slater, Alan Rickman, Geraldine McEwan, Michael McShane. Director: Kevin Reynolds.

   A lot of critics reviewed this film by dumping on Costner’s ego, just as they did with Brando twenty years ago, Welles twenty years before that, and D.W. Griffith twenty years before that. The few who paid any attention to the film itself carped about Costner’s accent — like, we go to Swashbuckler Movies for the Acting? — and delighted in making invidious comparisons with the Erroll Flynn version.

ROBIN HOOD PRINCE OF THIEVES

   Now I like the Flynn/Curtiz/DeHavilland/Keighly /Rathbone/Warner’s-Stock-Company Robin Hood a lot. It’s great fun and very pretty to look at, but I have to say
that it lacks any sense of dramatic development, due largely to the fact that the Basil Rathbone never gets to do anything very interesting, so Robin Hood doesn’t encounter any really substantial peril until the last few minutes, when Rathbone proves a worthy but out-classed opponent.

   The result is that Erroll Flynn, sexy as he is, comes off like a Hero in a Plastic Bubble and the film itself fails to generate much tension.

ROBIN HOOD PRINCE OF THIEVES

   The Costner Robin Hood, by contrast, offers some very substantial Heavies indeed, including a delightful Alan Rickman as the Sheriff, a slimy Guy of Gisbourne, a bona-fide Witch, and a pack of berserker Celts swarming atmospherically through the woods, jumping, screaming and generally having a hell of a time.

   The baddies in this one have so much fun, in fact, that what with Robin Hood having to be in it too, the whole thing gets to be just a trifle too long [143 minutes; 155 minutes, extended version]. Still, it’s a very nicely-done bit of film, and I recommend it.

— Reprinted from A Shropshire Sleuth #51, September 1991.



         ROBIN HOOD PRINCE OF THIEVES