'Robin Hood' and Making a War Movie Out of a Folk Hero

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'Robin Hood'

The film takes a page from 'American Sniper' — to its detriment.

[This story contains spoilers for Lionsgate/Summit's Robin Hood.]

If you feel compelled to yank Robin Hood, English folk hero of yore, out of the past and into the present, you can try one of two tacks. First, you can treat him as a distant cousin to Oliver Queen or perhaps Clint Barton. Second, you can remake him as an analogue to late Navy SEAL sniper and Chris Kyle. Director Otto Bathurst’s new adaptation of Robin Hood’s legend, simply titled Robin Hood, hews closer to the former approach, in keeping with the growing trend of making super those heroes who aren’t, but begins by functioning like a war movie.

Specifically, the pic functions like an Iraq War film, at least to start. That reference to Kyle isn’t an offhanded joke: Robin Hood’s first chapter reads as a folkloric remake of American Sniper, long before Bathurst returns us from the frontlines of the Crusades back to not-so-merry old England, where Robin Hood’s primary plot unfolds. Frankly, the folklore is absent from this stretch of the movie, replaced by grit, washed-out color schemes and costume design that’s really obviously meant to mimic desert fatigues. It’s distracting. Most of all, it’s just straight-up bizarre......

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