ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES - Blu-ray review

"Robin Hood: Prince of Thebes" isn't supposed to be an outright comedy, but thanks to Alan Rickman's over-the-top turn as the dastardly villainous Sheriff of Nottingham, the film's humor becomes its saving grace. I'm not sure it's what director Kevin Reynolds or star Kevin Costner had in mind, but it's what they got: plenty of spectacle and a cartload of funny scenes.

Indeed, the filmmakers so broadly characterized this 1991 film with melodramatics and overacting, it made ripe pickings for Mel Brooks two years later with his parody, "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." This is not to say that "Robin Hood: Prince of Whales" is a bad film, not by any means, not a Costner disaster of the magnitude of "Waterworld" or "The Postman." But it's not the swashbuckling masterpiece they could have made it, either, given the grand old legend the writers had to work with and the stars involved.

Anyway, Warner Brothers had confidence enough in the film to issue it in Blu-ray, with an extra twelve minutes of material added to its already lengthy duration. At 155 minutes, the movie now seems positively interminable, but for its dedicated fans the additional information should prove worthwhile. I still don't recognize the new content, though, except to note that the film appears never to end. If WB had really wanted to do us a favor, they would have clipped it by an hour instead of lengthening it.

The story line of "Robin Hood: Prince of Peeves" is familiar to most audiences thanks to countless variations on the theme. The year is 1194, and England's King Richard the Lion Hearted is away from the country after fighting in the Third Crusade. In his absence George, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Rickman), has been taxing the people of his county to death in the hope of reaping profits enough to bribe the country's noblemen into helping him usurp control of the government. What's more, because the Sheriff is not of royal blood, he plans to force himself in wedlock upon the comely (and feisty) Maid Marian Dubois (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), a cousin to the King, thereby enabling him legally to become monarch of the realm.

Meanwhile, in a nod to the sensibilities and political correctness of the late twentieth century, the filmmakers took a few liberties with the rest of the tale. Robin of Locksley is no mere rich boy who has stayed in his castle during the Crusades but has gone off himself to fight, and when the movie opens we find him escaping a Turkish prison and heading back to his family. With him is a newly made friend, Azeem (Morgan Freeman), a Moor whom Robin has saved from execution. Azeem swears to repay the debt and returns with Robin to England.

Upon his arrival home, the first thing Robin finds is that the evil Sheriff has murdered his father (Brian Blessed) and stolen his estate. From here, the plot follows its familiar course, with Robin joining and eventually leading a band of outlaws in Sherwood Forest, fighting against the Sheriff's tyranny, and protecting the virtue of the fair Marian.

Like so many other films that aren't quite sure of their aim, "Robin Hood: Prince of Tides" is a mishmash of disparate elements: adventure, history, comedy, drama, romance, epic, and legend. Most of it works only in short spurts, and the whole doesn't hang together very well. Part of the reason we can attribute to its stars. Costner is hardly the dashing Robin Hood of Errol Flynn memory. He's more the sweet, Midwestern, "Ah, shucks" type of fellow whose demeanor works perfectly in a film like "Dances With Wolves" but who seems lost at sea as one of England's most gallant heroes. If you're an old-movie buff and have seen the 1938 "Adventures of Robin Hood," think of Gary Cooper in the Flynn role. Doesn't work, huh?

Because Costner is performing opposite Morgan Freeman, who is never at a loss for forceful, fluent expressiveness, Freeman upstages Costner at every turn. Again, Freeman is the loyal sidekick, whether it be to Costner, Eastwood, Robbins, Nicholson, or Bale. He's good at it. Then, with Rickman playing the heavy in so comically exaggerated a style ("Cancel Christmas!") that he would not be out of place in Brooks's satire, the three principals seem engaged in entirely different movies. Figure in an impudent young Englishman, Will Scarlett, played by that noted young Englishman-via-New York Christian Slater, and you get one bizarre set of characters.

Furthermore, there are the script's embroideries, some of which are hardly less than corny. Nottingham, for instance, keeps an old soothsayer witch, Mortianna (Geraldine McEwan), in the basement of his castle; she's a crone who guides his every move with her fortune-telling charms and spells. Or take the sequence where Robin returns to England after his long absence and goes to see Marian. She is wearing, for reasons unknown, full armor and attacks him viciously, apparently not recognizing him and thinking him an intruder. Surely, she didn't have time to put on a complete suit of armor in the minutes it took Robin to knock on her door and enter. Besides those peculiarities, there are several contrived, soap-opera turns of events concerning Will Scarlett and Mortianna to contend with, in addition to Michael Kamen's bold but largely overblown musical score underpinning every scene in a grandiose manner, no matter how inconsequential the goings on. It's all more than a tad much.

It also disappointed me not to find the celebrated archery contest included in the story, the one where Robin splits his opponent's arrow. But never mind; almost everything and everyone else is here, including the bellicose Little John (Nick Brimble), the jolly Friar Tuck (Michael McShane), the shifty Guy of Gisborne (Michael Wincott), the old family retainer, Duncan (Walter Sparrow), an uncredited cameo visit by Sean Connery, and a whole lot of Costner swinging from the trees and rafters.

Although "Robin's Hood Is Full of Thieves" provides more pomp and show than it does characterization, logic, or common sense, it's enough to keep one occupied for most of the film's duration. It plods along through the first hour but picks up a little more energy in its later stages. The battle with the Celts is a high point of the action, as is the finale, and the film's location shots in France and England are quite lovely. If one has the patience, "Robin Hood: Prints of Thieves" has its rewards, few as they may be.

Video:
Like its standard-definition counterpart, the picture quality in this 1.85:1 ratio, BD50, VC-1 encoded Blu-ray transfer is curiously soft and murky most of the time, indoors and out. Since the movie begins in the relative gloom of a dungeon cell, we can understand the dim, shadowy images. Yet when things open up into broad daylight and objects are still a little fuzzy and veiled, it's rather disappointing. However, since things are pretty much as I remember them from a movie theater, I'm going to assume the softness is a condition of the original print. In any case, Warner Brothers' BD transfer captures most of the hues realistically enough, never too bright, though a touch glossy, with a fair amount of detail in some but not all of the close-ups. You'll notice some oddities in facial colorations, though, which is not particularly good; and a fair amount of natural film grain, which is good.

Audio:
The available audio options in English are Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. More important from my perspective, Warner Bros. have finally made TrueHD the default; maybe they've been reading what many others and I have been saying for a long time. In TrueHD one gets the expected results, only firmer and smoother, with a wide left-to-right stereo spread and a decent, if not spectacular, amount of rear-channel activity. There is particularly good musical ambience reinforcement in the surrounds, plus the usual variety of bird and forest noises, wind, dripping water, crackling fires, and explosions. The frequency range and dynamics are only about average for a big-budget movie, though, meaning they are adequate but may not impress one as anything special.

Extras:
This Blu-ray edition contains many but not all of the extras found on WB's two-disc DVD release. Things begin with the extended, widescreen presentation of the movie, along with two audio commentaries, the first with star Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds and the second with co-stars Morgan Freeman and Christian Slater and co-writers and producers Pen Desham and John Watson.

Next, we get the usual assortment of behind-the-scenes featurettes and movie music. The bonuses start with a thirty-one minute featurette, "Robin Hood: The Man, The Myth, The Legend," narrated by Pierce Brosnan and made mostly at the time of the film's production as a promotional item. But it does contain some good bits of information on the origins of the Robin Hood tradition, and it reminds us how much better Brosnan would have been in the starring role. Then, there are vintage interviews with the film's stars, "One on One," with Costner, Freeman, Mastrantonio, Rickman, and Slater. Following those, there is a music video, "Bryan Adams Live at Slane Castle, Ireland," the singer performing the movie's closing-credits tune, "(Everything I Do) I Do For You." And a segment I liked a lot was Michael Kamen's soundtrack score that you can play all at once or in separate movements.

In addition, there are a number of TV spots and a widescreen theatrical trailer; a generous forty-six scene selections; English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian spoken languages; French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, and Swedish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
"Robin Hood: The Movie Formerly Known as Prince" is not a terrible film, mind you, but it's not the poetic, idyllic, world-beating adventure epic it could have been. The Wife-O-Meter gave it a 5/10 rating, leaving at the halfway mark, which seems fair enough.

I suspect that too many people involved in the film's creation were going in too many different directions wanting too many different things for them to produce a cohesive result. Individually, Morgan Freeman stands out, as usual, for his dramatic eloquence; Alan Rickman for his sympathetically amusing villain; and Costner for his down-home, good ol' boy. Together, however, you take your chances.