robin hood

The Cannes film festival has picked the most rousing possible opener with this new cinema treatment of the Robin Hood legend. Gladiator may be 10 years ago now, but director Ridley Scott has had his persistent faith in Russell Crowe amply rewarded; Crowe may be puffier of face, hoarser of voice and done rather too much confrontational living in public, but he still has exactly the right kind of leading-man steel to make this ambitious, serious and unashamedly populist epic work.

1. Robin Hood
2. Production year: 2010
3. Countries: Rest of the world, UK, USA
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 140 mins
6. Directors: Ridley Scott
7. Cast: Cate Blanchett, Danny Huston, Kevin Durand, Mark Strong, Matthew MacFadyen, Max von Sydow, Russell Crowe, Scott Grimes, William Hurt
8. More on this film

With so many variants of the story already filmed, Scott and his screenwriter, Brian Helgeland, have gone for what, if this was a superhero film, would be called an origin myth: it finishes at pretty much the point most tellings of the tale start. Scott's Robin Hood is not a story of derring-do in Sherwood Forest, nor is it of merry chaps in Lincoln green outsmarting the vile sheriff of Nottingham; it's a story of dispossession and rebellion that manages to cleverly link together most of the seemingly irreconcilable elements of the Hood myth, and wrap it all up in a warm, fuzzy ball of pro-democratic class consciousness.

Things get under way as Richard the Lionheart is killed while besieging a French castle, supposedly heading home to England from the crusades.

Among his army is one Robin Longstride (Crowe), a common archer who by various flukes too numerous to mention ends up in possession of the dead king's crown as well as the identity of one of Richard's most trusted retainers, Robert of Loxley, also dead. (This allows the Hood character to both partake in the aristocratic mien of a figure required to direct military operations, and also to retain a little peasant-class credibility, so necessary for that steal-from-the-rich thing he has going.)

Longstride/Loxley fakes his way back to England, is present at the coronation of Richard's weaselly brother John, then heads north to present Loxley's sword to his father, honouring the dead man's last wish. And here's the clever bit: Loxley senior suggests himself the same deception, that Longstride should pass for Loxley, even to the extent of occupying the same bedchamber as Robert's wife, Marian (Cate Blanchett).

The scene is then set for a broad, sweeping, fiendishly complicated narrative, in which Longstride must fend off the depredations of vicious skinhead Mark Strong (playing someone called Godfrey, who is both toady to King John and treasonous conspirator against him), deliver a stirring speech promoting a Magna Carta-type charter of liberties, see off an invasion attempt by the king of France, and rescue Marian from near-certain death in the surf.

It isn't till it's all over that you realise that the sheriff of Nottingham is only a footnote, reduced to a couple of buffoonish walk-on lines.

Scott orchestrates the sound and fury with a seemingly effortless bravura: unfussily pulling off a profusion of tremendous action scenes and really quite impressive period backdrops (including one CGI panorama of medieval London that looks like a Wenceslaus Hollar engraving come to life).

Only once does the strain show: the invading French turn up on the English coast in a sequence rather obviously lifted from Saving Private Ryan, even down to the carnage in the water. (It's as if Scott is saying: anything you can do, Spielberg …)

Scott is also well served by some terrific performances: particularly Blanchett, who takes advantage of a beefed-up Marian role to really burn up the screen.

Whether this will quite do the same for Crowe as Gladiator remains to be seen; it's hard for a film that is painted in such sombre browns and dull greens to be especially inspirational. But there's no doubting the strength and excellence of the film-making on display.

This is strong stuff.