Robin Hood

For­get his­to­ry. For­get every­thing you think you know. This film opens with a bold claim, as an unnamed nar­ra­tor – lat­er revealed to be Tim Minchin’s Fri­ar Tuck – explains that what we are about to watch is some­thing entire­ly new. He also kind­ly informs us that it is ​“no bed­time sto­ry”. Maybe so, but that’s not to say it won’t put you to sleep.

This is the lat­est Hol­ly­wood retelling of the leg­end of Robin Hood, brought to you by jour­ney­man TV direc­tor Otto Bathurst and first-time screen­writ­ers Ben Chan­dler and David James Kel­ly. It is, omi­nous­ly, the first instal­ment in a pro­posed fran­chise, and telling­ly owes more to Guy Ritchie’s bloat­ed, blokeish King Arthur and the Assassin’s Creed video game series than any pre­vi­ous cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of this age-old Eng­lish folk­tale. Quite who the film is for is anyone’s guess.

Taron Egerton plays Robin of Lox­ley, a scamp­ish noble­man and skilled marks­men who is draft­ed to fight in the Cru­sades in the Mid­dle East. Rob is shown to be a fear­less fight­er but evi­dent­ly has a prob­lem with author­i­ty, and he returns to Not­ting­ham bat­tle-scarred and des­per­ate­ly seek­ing revenge against those in pow­er. Ini­tial­ly his jour­ney from toff to trau­ma vic­tim hints at some­thing far removed from the cosy, swash­buck­ling adven­tures of a tights-clad rogue and his band of mer­ry men, steal­ing from the rich to give to the poor. But this dark­er char­ac­ter arc is nev­er real­ly explored, the script instead opt­ing to fore­ground our hero’s on-off rela­tion­ship with Eve Hewson’s thin­ly-sketched Marian.

While Marian’s nar­ra­tive func­tion is to dis­tract Rob and gen­er­al­ly get in the way, Jamie Foxx’s Ara­bi­an sol­dier ​“John” (his real name is too for­eign to pro­nounce), plays a more deci­sive role. Hav­ing stowed away on a boat to Eng­land in order to track down the vin­dic­tive gen­er­al who mur­dered his son, John devis­es a Project May­hem-style plan to scup­per the Sheriff’s pun­ish­ing war tax, there­by pro­vid­ing respite for the long-suf­fer­ing towns­peo­ple. Ben Mendel­sohn is on top bas­tard form as the Sher­iff of Not­ting­ham, although fol­low­ing a string of sim­i­lar turns in Rogue One and Ready Play­er One his stock vil­lain act is start­ing to wear thin.

Bathurst has pitched Robin Hood as a ​“hip” take on the title character’s ori­gins, yet it is a decid­ed­ly dour, un-groovy affair. It’s a love sto­ry devoid of romance, an action flick severe­ly lack­ing in spark and spec­ta­cle, a his­tor­i­cal epic filled with fla­grant inac­cu­ra­cies and wrong­head­ed revi­sion­ism. There is noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fresh or inven­tive about the film, and, set­ting aside the wild­ly incon­gru­ous accents, jar­ring­ly mod­ern, machine-stitched cos­tumes and ugly CG ren­der of a vague­ly medieval set­ting, it is a sim­ple fact that no one has ever looked cool shoot­ing a bow and arrow while pirou­et­ting back­wards off a ledge. Jamie Dor­nan also stars.