Robin Hood

This is out on DVD now. Cool story, although totally made up. Worth see­ing, though.

The action scenes are fun, and Robin Hood is por­trayed as a hero for free­dom from tyranny, but his­tor­i­cally all the facts are wrong. Still, it is inspir­ing and exciting.

A big neg­a­tive fac­tor is the way they por­tray the Catholic Church and Richard the Lion­hearted. They make the Church to be cor­rupt, unscrupu­lous about vio­lence, and allied to cor­rupt power. The movie could make a good start­ing point for an inves­ti­ga­tion into why Richard the Lion­hearted went on the Cru­sades and what he did there. The Church is not afraid of a seri­ous his­tor­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion into this theme, and the answers will come out quite dif­fer­ent than what the movie portrays.

Still the movie is inspir­ing for the hero­ism and love for human­ity it evokes. The beach bat­tle scene is fun, but totally unre­al­is­tic. The direc­tors seemed to be try­ing to recre­ate the drama and inten­sity of the open­ing scene of Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, but the time change doesn’t work.

Bot­tom line: Cool story, but totally made up.