BEFORE: I missed it by one day, but here's PATRICK Bergin (last seen in "Treasure Island"), who actually is Irish, for St. Patrick's Day... Linking from last night's film, Errol Flynn was in "Lilacs in the Spring" with Sean Connery, who was also in "The Avengers" with Uma Thurman.
THE PLOT: Another version of the classic Robin Hood epic, with some variations.
AFTER: Yes, some things stay the same in every version of Robin Hood - how Robin met Little John, how Prince John was an overbearing prick, and the dispute between the Saxons and the Normans. Some things are different here - there's no archery tournament, and the Sheriff of Nottingham is barely mentioned. Instead the villains are Baron Roger Daguerre, and his visiting guest, Sir Miles Folcanet, to whom Maid Marian is engaged.
What's not believable here is showing Marian disguising herself as a young man in order to learn more about Robin and his men. In no way does she look like anything but Marian, just with different color hair. Here's where casting Uma Thurman (last seen in "Percy Jackson & The Olympians") may have been a mistake, because there's no disguising her unique face.
The story of Robin Hood is really an economics lesson, though the old "rob from the rich to give to the poor" explanation seems a bit simplistic. In last night's film, a ransom was needed to free King Richard from captivity, and thus the Saxons had to be taxed (though who can say if the money would have been used for its intended purpose...). In tonight's film, there's no mention of ransom, so it's just more tax-and-spend economics - did people believe in the "trickle-down" theory even back then? Robin clearly doesn't, so he helps things along - but at least there's a stated motivation for returning the tax money to the poor. If they didn't, some starving villager might have turned Robin in for a reward.
I guess that makes sense - as I figured, we're dealing with the same pieces tonight, they just fit together in a different way.
Also starring Jurgen Prochnow (last seen in "The English Patient"), Jeroen Krabbe (last seen in "The Prince of Tides").
RATING: 6 out of 10 handmaidens
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