Subject: ROBIN HOOD
Ok, I've been watching this thing for 15 minutes... They've screwed the story around pretty good. It appears to be taking place in France, but I can't prove that. There is no Sheriff of Nottingham. The bad guys are Baron Daguerre and a knight named Miles Falconet (Prochnow)... who apparently is going to be the badguy who's supposed to end up engaged to Marian before she runs off with the 'hood. He is speaking with a French accent.
Uma Thurman is just about the nastiest, smirkiest Maid Marian I have ever seen. Eeyew eeyew eeyew!
Subject: ROBIN HOOD 2
Okay, it's been 45 minutes. All I want out of this movie now is to see Jürgen give Uma one good, hard, permanently disfiguring punch in the face. Just one.
Subject: Re: ROBIN HOOD 2
'Maid Marian' is a bitch in this movie. I wanted her uncle to hit her too.
P.S. We can add this one to the Bloody Interview collection. Miles Falconet has somebody tortured to death to get information about Robin Hood out of him.
P.P.S. Trivia corner... Prochnow can't ride a horse. They show him sitting on one any number of times, but went to great lengths never to show him in motion on the thing.
Subject: Re: ROBIN HOOD 2
I didn't like the Friar Tuck. Or the Robin Hood a whole lot. I DID like Little John. And the other badguy, Baron Daguerre.
Jürgen did not hit Uma, either. Damn. There was a moment there when I thought he might.
Sorry if I'm repeating myself (I must be) but the BBC did ROBIN HOOD as a 6-part series in the 1970s that was so good I've never cared much for any other version. I will say that this one was a better movie than Kevin Costner's, whatever that's worth.
[Very little - the Kevin Costner ROBIN HOOD is a bomb. Both ROBIN HOODs came out in the same year (1991), so be careful which one you get if you go looking for this one. -ed.]
Jürgen's performance was rather over the top. I'll blame the director since Jürgen's played plenty of villains in a more understated manner; it ain't like he don't know how to do that. He got pretty well humiliated in this thing too. In the first fight he gets his neck slashed by Will Scarlet; then the next time he runs into Robin Hood, Robin makes a point of (ick) re-opening the same wound - while Jürgen was unarmed and at his mercy - which displeased me mightily. Is it just me, or is that a pretty unsporting act for Robin Hood? He's supposed to be nobler than that.
Uma's Maid Marian had a hell of a mouth on her, too - mostly when she was talking to Jürgen - and I didn't like THAT either. Maid Marian is supposed to be demure. When she rebels, she does it quietly. She's not supposed to be running around calling people names. She's also supposed to be close to her uncle, who's not supposed to be a villain. Oh, well. One thing I notice about all these ROBIN HOODs is that every time a new one gets done, Maid Marian is more of a broad every time. It does not enhance the romantic aspect of the story.
Jürgen had 2 good moments in this, anyway... one was the line, "Sometimes you are so wet one could shoot snipe off you." (He was ticked off at the baron for refusing to give him soldiers to go after Robin Hood with.)
The other was a move in a swordfight, when he beckoned his opponent toward him - using only his middle finger. I fell out of my chair.
Subject: Robin Hood revisited
You know what else is wrong with this Robin Hood? not only does he not want to give money to the poor, but in the opening sequence when he saves a peasant from being killed by the king's men for poaching... he didn't want to do that either. He only intervened because Will Scarlet put a guilt trip on him about it.
If that's how they wanted to play it, they could have done a much better job. After he reluctantly gives money to the poor, he could kick their dogs on the way out... maybe a little cannibalism when the hunting is bad... and he should have just let Jürgen poke that peasant's eyes out and then said "Ok, mister, I think that's enough."
Subject: Re: hello
I couldn't STOP watching it...
Uma...must wipe that smirk off of her face...with a rusty crowbar...
Subject: Re: hello
i'm so glad you hated uma. how'd you like that "lashing" conversation? maybe marian and robin should have just S&M'd each other to death.
[Jürgen had more than 2 good moments in this. In fact, because Maid Marian WAS so obnoxious his scenes with her are a blast, as are the scenes with Baron Daguerre. I just hate having to feel sorry for him the whole time. He's the villain and you're not supposed to feel sorry for him, but I can't help it when Jürgen looks like his feelings have been hurt so badly and the hero has such an attitude problem. That maniacal, gloating grin on Patrick Bergin's face as he escaped after the trial took me right out of Robin Hood's camp, and he never gave me a reason to go back to it.
Bergin's Robin Hood was pretty much a butthead.
There was also a complaint from someone about Jürgen's French accent, but I'm not qualified to judge and I figure he was just doing it to have fun anyway - and he's entitled to have fun - so leave him alone. If you want to gripe about something, make yourself useful and gripe about that perpetual snotty smirk of Uma's. -ed.]
It's fun! I am fonder of Robin Hood than you-all; I like its earthy dirt-under-its-fingernails quality, and thought the sword fight at the end rocked. I mean, they really looked tired, pissed off, fed up and hurt, which is just as it should be. (Puts me in mind of Livia haranguing the Gladiators [a fave scene]: "And I don't want to watch two grown men pussy-footing around each other for an hour before one of them aims a real blow! There's been too much of that lately!") Yeah, so Uma sucks (smug prig). If her neck had been two inches shorter she'd never have had a career at all. I do have a soft-spot for Patrick Bergin, though he can be an unreconstructed slab of glazed ham at times; I liked him in MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON. If you've never seen it, it's too episodic and fairly bogus historically in spots, (from my understanding) but it sure makes great eye-candy, and isn't afraid to attempt some good old fashioned Hollywood "sweep" which all these post-modernists are too embarrassed to try for nowadays. That BBC Robin Hood someone referenced -- is that the one they ran on ONCE UPON A CLASSIC with Conrad Asquith as Little John and Martin Potter as Robin Hood? It's been eons, but I too remember loving that mightily.