There is a decent adventure here, stretched to 143 minutes and pulled between Kevin Costner’s solemnity and Alan Rickman’s mischief. The supporting cast and Michael Kamen’s score provide reasons to persist, though patience is required.
Kevin Reynolds’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a decent adventure made tiring by its insistence on being several other things as well. It wants a serious hero, a comic villain, a romance and a message about justice, and it gives each enough attention to interrupt the others. At 143 minutes, there is time for the action to raise our spirits and for the talk to lower them again. We would recommend it cautiously, chiefly for the actors standing around Robin.
Kevin Costner plays Robin of Locksley with a sincerity that ought to help a story about doing right by breaking the law. The trouble is the lack of ease: he carries the hero’s importance into passages that need a lighter touch, and makes the earnest dialogue feel longer than it is. His accent is a smaller problem than his stiffness. The adventure needs more pleasure from its leading man, especially when the supporting actors make such a point of supplying it.
Alan Rickman supplies that pleasure as the Sheriff of Nottingham, playing the villain with a comic extravagance that makes Costner look still more dutiful. We laughed at how thoroughly he enjoys making the Sheriff ridiculous. The performance works because Rickman commits to the man’s vanity rather than politely signalling that the part is a joke. Morgan Freeman’s Azeem offers a calmer source of enjoyment, with a composure that gives the film somewhere to rest. Freeman is especially welcome whenever the film grows overexcited.
Reynolds is at his most persuasive when he concentrates on the adventure. Douglas Milsome’s roving camera gives the action a freedom that the dialogue scenes often lack, and Michael Kamen’s rousing score helps us feel the excitement the hero does not always communicate. John Graysmark’s production design gives the action a credible setting, though it cannot disguise how differently the actors approach their parts. The music, in particular, earns its enthusiasm without requiring much assistance from Costner.
The screenplay by Pen Densham and John Watson makes their work harder by moving awkwardly between earnest instruction and broad comedy. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio gives Marian more life than the romance consistently allows, but the writing keeps asking us to take things seriously before changing its mind. Peter Boyle’s editing cannot find a comfortable rhythm for the switches, and the film feels long even when there is plenty happening. Individual pleasures arrive regularly, but the stretches between them are often laboured.
Historical tidiness would not rescue it, and we have no objection to a Robin Hood adventure that plays freely with the legend. The genre can accommodate broad comedy and modern attitudes; the difficulty here is getting the same characters to belong comfortably in the serious passages too. Reynolds is not consistently able to do that, which makes the film less satisfying than its strongest performances suggest. Try it for Rickman and Freeman, provided a stiff leading man and a leisurely 143 minutes are not enough to put you off.
