by Lynn Lee
- Locksley…I’m gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!
-Why a spoon?
-Because it’s DULL, you twit, it’ll hurt more!”
If you remember anything about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it’s probably those lines. Or, more generally, Alan Rickman’s scrumptiously hammy turn as the villain who bellows them. Or perhaps you remember Kevin Costner’s complete failure to master anything resembling an English accent. If you’d just as soon forget Costner ever played Robin Hood, you’re not alone: consensus opinion generally holds that Rickman was the only good thing about the movie, which received tepid reviews at the time of its release and hasn’t exactly aged into a classic.
It’s worth noting, however, that a lot of people really liked Prince of Thieves at the time...
It was the second-highest grossing film of 1991, trailing only the megablockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And among its most enthusiastic fans were none other than yours truly and my quietly nerdy set of middle school friends. The movie got regular VCR rotation at our nerdy parties. We would quote the most iconic lines to each other and sing along with that sappy (Oscar-nominated!) Bryan Adams song. Some of us swooned over Costner, then in his mature dreamboat phase. Others sighed for the edgier up-and-coming young heartthrob, Christian Slater, who plays a rather angry-emo Will Scarlet.
Even as I grew into more of a cinephile, for years I retained a soft spot and a place on my shelf of videotapes for Prince of Thieves. Eventually I lost track of it in the post-VHS era, as other movies took its place in my consciousness and DVDs replaced the videotapes on my shelf. Until recently, I hadn’t seen it in well over a decade - maybe closer to two. However, in honor of TFE’s Smackdown-inspired celebration of all things 1991 and the movie’s availability on Hulu, I revisited this staple of my adolescence to see how it held up.
The verdict?
Honestly? I still love it.
Oh sure, it’s not for everyone. To those who prefer a more traditional Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (directed by Kevin Reynolds, who would later collaborate with Costner on the even-more-maligned Waterworld) may seem like an unprepossessing, fitfully revisionist take on the much-adapted legend – one that shifts awkwardly between gritty (but still PG-13) violence and tongue-in-cheek comedy in the vein of The Princess Bride, while attempting to embrace the 1990s Hollywood version of a “woke” sensibility. There are no courtly scenes, no archery tournament, no Prince John and barely any Richard the Lion-Hearted. The color palette is all drab greens, grays, and browns and lurid shadows, in stark contrast to the Technicolor gloss of the Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland The Adventures of Robin Hood, which remains the gold standard for Robin Hood movies.
In this version of the story, Robin of Locksley returns from the Crusades, accompanied by a noble Saracen (Morgan Freeman), to find his father murdered and his property despoiled by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Rickman). On the lam from Nottingham and his right-hand henchman, Guy of Gisborne (Michael Wincott at his raspiest), Robin seeks refuge in Sherwood Forest, where he encounters other victims of the Sheriff’s oppression and becomes their leader almost by accident. This Robin Hood is less focused on the Robin Hood part – i.e., stealing from the rich to give to the poor – and much more on the building showdown between Robin and Nottingham, who’s also plotting, in King Richard’s absence, to usurp the throne by marrying the King’s cousin, Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio).
Here’s the thing: setting aside the legend, Prince of Thieves works quite well as an action adventure and simple revenge drama. Never mind the overabundance of subplots; even if you don’t care about Robin’s daddy issues or Nottingham’s witch-mommy issues, or whether Maid Marian can be won over by Robin’s naked butt (in one of the movie’s silliest scenes), the Sheriff’s hissworthy antics are highly effective at getting you to root for Robin Hood to take him down. The fight and flight scenes are well choreographed and deftly shot, contrasting the natural beauty of the English woods and countryside against the griminess of its inhabitants. The final climactic sequence at Nottingham’s castle is still as tense and thrilling as ever. And the music, composed by Michael Kamen, is downright fantastic – the opening credits overture alone offers a far more inspiring rallying cry than any of Costner’s attempts at oratory.
As for Costner...there’s a reason I used to describe PoT as a great movie if you took him out of it, notwithstanding it was literally billed as “Kevin Costner IS Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.” Apart from his conspicuously American accent, which does stick out like a sore thumb, his performance isn’t bad – certainly not bad enough to merit the Razzie it won – so much as inert, especially next to his chief antagonist’s fervid scenery consumption. Costner’s subdued affect and moments of quiet humor fail to enliven an interpretation of a folk hero that feels less like Robin Hood and more like a low wattage medieval variation on his character in Dances With Wolves. He’s got the physicality of the role down; where he falls short is the kind of energy and charisma that one would expect of a leader of rebels.
And yet I’d argue Costner’s flatness doesn’t matter that much because everyone around him is so fun to watch. There’s Rickman, of course, who revels in the vicious petulance of the scheming Sheriff; Mastrantonio charms as an unexpectedly feisty Maid Marian; a raft of British supporting players supply the local color and drollery that the American leads lack, with Nick Brimble and Michael McShane the standouts as Little John and Friar Tuck, respectively. And above all these is Freeman’s Azeem, the Moor whom Robin breaks out of prison in Jerusalem, and who swears he will stay with Robin until he’s saved Robin’s life. With his imperturbable calm, faultless manners (apart from the occasional expressive side-eye), and seemingly limitless array of superior skills and tools that he deploys to aid Robin, Azeem verges at times on “magical Negro” territory, yet Freeman – as Freeman does – invests the character with such dignity and grace that he becomes a compelling figure in his own right and the movie’s stealth MVP. At the same time, his rapport with Robin is one of PoT’s most enduring pleasures, even if it stretches historical plausibility; Robin Hood is a myth, after all, subject to constant reinvention.
Is nostalgia coloring my response to a movie that the rest of the world has mostly forgotten over the last three decades? Perhaps. Still, if you like a good old-fashioned swashbuckler with some ’90s inflections, you could do far worse than Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It may be be a bit shambly, but ultimately it’s pretty damn entertaining.