Scott decided, I think, to get away from the whole campy thing in tights business and wanted to make this 'real'. So there is sweat and dirt and rats at the cheese and even bad teeth, which is fair enough, but it is also joyless.

| Aug 30, 2018

| Original Score: B- | Feb 18, 2012

We never even get to see Robin steal from the rich and give to the poor. That's because the film is a prequel in search of a sequel. With any luck, we won't get one.

| Original Score: C- | Jan 3, 2011

Its $200-million budget is on the screen. This is a big-scale ambitious period epic in the 60s grand tradition. It seeks to retell a well-worn tale, to put old wine in a shiny new bottle.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 7, 2010

The film is pretty, and there are a few solid moments every hour. But considered as a work of cinema, with paid professionals involved, it's an extremely lackluster story.

| Original Score: D+ | May 26, 2010

It is a long, joyless exercise in tedium that defies imagination, this new journey to Sherwood Forest an arrow to the jugular that's as lifeless as it is disappointing.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 20, 2010

There are great roaring fires and buckets of mead but none of it will ever warm you to Russell Crowe, whose charm seems to diminish by the nanosecond.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 20, 2010

A richly detailed movie that is at least as good as the Oscar-winning Gladiator, the first collaboration between Scott and Crowe.

| May 17, 2010

"And so the legend begins," the new movie tells us at the end. But it's too late.

| May 17, 2010

Robin and Marian are played by a scowling Russell Crowe and a grim Cate Blanchett, who has the face of a wooden squaw stained by decades of cigar smoke. I can't remember a more un-fun-looking couple.

| May 17, 2010

As in so many summer behemoths, the real stars are the projectiles-in this case, arrows with their own point-of-view shots, zipping through the air and finding their targets with pinpoint accuracy.

| May 14, 2010

Damned if those dual spoilsports, the gladiatorial director Ridley Scott reteamed with his portly star Russell Crowe, haven't drained every drop of merriment right out of the myth.

| Original Score: 1/4 | May 14, 2010

If it's sword-on-sword with arrows-in-the-air action you want, Robin Hood delivers in a big way.

| Original Score: B | May 14, 2010

It's a resolutely grim and grubby lesson in 13th-century British history filtered through all the requisite trademarks of a summer blockbuster.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 14, 2010

There is a whole lot of meanwhile in this crowded, lumbering film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 14, 2010

Scott is at his best directing the action sequences and moving the story forward but is unable to imbue the characters with any dimensionality.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 14, 2010

The Robin Hood of myth and moviedom is for the most part AWOL. Why should we have to wait until the last five minutes to see Crowe crack a smile, let alone split an arrow?

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 14, 2010

Instead of the usual romantic adventure, Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland offer a gritty drama, using the Robin Hood story to depict the birth pangs of liberty. They ground the film in the details of medieval life.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 14, 2010

In one unfortunate regard, Ridley Scott's grimy Robin Hood lives up to the actions of its legendary character: It, too, robs -- but just from richer movies.

| May 14, 2010

Pretty much ill-conceived from the ground up but saved by a couple of strong performances and a wealth of well-researched period detail. Not the most elegant defense, but like the movie, it'll do.

| May 14, 2010