Director: Kevin Reynolds
Cast: Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Alan Rickman
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Flashback to 1991 for just a moment, and I even had a full range of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves toys (even if they were just a pretty feeble repackaging of Kenner’s Return of the Jedi toys from 1983. Seriously. They just slightly repainted an Ewok’s face to make Friar Tuck. Look it up.
Did I Like It: There is plenty to like about the film. It’s core identity as a film is that of a competent 90s actioner. There are explosions, and jumps, and fights, and a thumping orchestral score (which, for reasons passing my immediate understanding became the music behind the Walt Disney Studios vanity card after a while).
Morgan Freeman is quite good in a thankless, undercooked, and probably ill-considered, but he’s been the best thing in plenty of bad things. Some great actors just like to work. Alan Rickman is a cartoon confection of a villain, but understands the job ahead of him perfectly and you marvel at the fact that, in what amounted to his three most memorable roles, he plays the villain, or at the very least an anti-hero. In the Harry Potter films, he milks every moment out of the pathos available to him. In Die Hard (1988) he is a coiled snake of ruthless intelligence. In this film, he’s Sindely Whiplash. And all are equally valid.
The problem is, that there’s something rotten at the core of the movie, and it is its star. Much was made in the years immediately after the films release about Costner not playing the hero of Sherwood Forrest with an English accent, but you forget how wobbly the whole enterprise is if you haven’t seen it in a while. Costner feebly attempts a more formal tone of speaking, as if that will serve, but even that is inconsistent. It’s only somewhat his fault, as the very idea of casting him in the role is a bad one. At his core, he’s too all-American. The corpse in The Big Chill (1983)? Sure. Pa Kent? Absolutely. He’s not an Englishman. But, sadly, he was a bit too big after Dances with Wolves (1990) and no one could say no.
Ultimately, it kind of makes it akin to Star Wars — Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) in that way, a fine piece of blockbuster entertainment with a single unbelievable performance at it that brings the whole affair down.
I didn’t think as I was starting to write this review that I was going to offer quite so many Star Wars comparisons in this review, but here we are.