Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Except for the political implications of the addition of Freeman's character (which he brings off gracefully) and some revisionism about the nobility of the crusades (which, in my opinion, is long overdue), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is just an adventure movie - which is basically what I like about it. The second half is stronger than the first because it's swifter and more action-packed. Robin's feats of derring-do are always (as Costner might put it) neat - the more improbable, the better.

Despite the miscasting of the central role and quite a lot of lackluster dialogue, the story proves again to be almost foolproof. The fight sequences are explosive, the physical production is impressive, and the supporting performances are full of juice.

Reynolds, who directed the little-seen but brilliantly realized The Beast , makes the camera his plaything in Prince of Thieves. This makes the movie at times obnoxious -- he repeatedly jams the lens into the bad guys' faces -- but most of it is highly watchable. Reynolds captures the dark and dank stuff better than Tim Burton did in Batman , and the action sequences thrust and cut across the screen. [14 June 1991, p.G5]

With so much money and talent at work here, though, this latest incarnation of the legend is considerably smaller than the sum of its parts.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves has pomp and scale; what it lacks is something essential -- a sense of Once Upon a Time wonder, the exultant, heady thrill of legend.

Kevin Costner very definitely isn't Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and his noticeable awkwardness in that rebel's role underlines the problems this muddled, fitfully effective version of a most durable English legend has in deciding which face it wants to present to the world at large. While the makers of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves may have set out to bury the poor old duffer of Sherwood Forest in a welter of trendy banter, they have ended up burying themselves as well.

Black powder and Christian Slater are cool and all, but real dramatic successes come when a film has both heart and a slate of talented actors who aren’t just leaning on their oversized patchwork capes to tell the story.

Greetings from Lithuania. "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" (1991) was and still is a good adventure movie about Robin Hood. This film is a pure Hollywood adventure movie with all of its pro and cons. It features a stellar cast in many roles, who all did a good job here - but its the Alan Rickman who stole the show for me. Cinematography was very good here, set design was top notch. It has a good pacing - even at running time 2 h 30 min (extended cut) and 2 h 18 min (theatrical cut) this film barely drags. I like this story and even while it is not historically accurate by any means - it was tailor made for a fun, big Hollywood adventure movie and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" is exactly what it is. Overall, "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" is a good if not a great film. It has great cast, very good filmmaking and story that is involving despite its shortcoming. A good entertaining classic at this point.

Wow this has not aged well? While Amercian actors do bad impressions of English accents. Cheesy, corny and mildly offensive, but I suppose it does capture the English people of those times? Alan Rickman just hams it up as the bad guy and has the most fun with the role.

Medieval-themed films are lovely, but rarely meet the minimum requirements of historical rigor, preferring to create a false idea of what the Middle Ages were like and how people behaved. This film is no exception, so if you want a film more historically respectful please look for another option. If your intention is just to have some fun, go ahead. In fact, this film is a typical medieval blockbuster of entertainment, full of sword fights, epic rescues and a lady waiting to be saved. Inspired by the classic legends of Robin Hood, they tell a story invented around the characters we already know. According to the script, Robin is the son of an English nobleman who traveled with his king on the Third Crusade, becoming a prisoner of Muslims. After escaping, with the help of a companion in arms, he is saved by that companion, who dies next. From there, accompanied by a Moor who becomes his bodyguard, he returns to England to find his home burned down, his father murdered and his lands taken by the violent, unjust and diabolical Sheriff of Nottingham. From there, marked as an outcast, he will join the bandits of the forest and devote his life to avenging his father by fighting the Sheriff, and also to protecting Lady Marion, the sister of the man who died to save him. This film was made during the golden age of Kevin Costner's career. He had just been successful in "Dances With Wolves" the previous year, and will reach the top of his career the following year, with "Bodyguard". And in this film he does everything he has to do: to shine, be the hero, save the day and fight against evil, embodied by Allan Rickman, another great actor who excels in his task of being worthy of our hatred, playing his character in a sinisterly funny way. I'm sure he was having fun with it. In addition to them, we have an excellent interpretation of Morgan Freeman, with touches of humor. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is very boring and would never be my choice to play such a character, as she is unable to create any emotional depth or to have some chemistry with Costner. Christian Slater is annoying and serves almost nothing. Geraldine McEwan, Michael McShane and Nick Brimble are good at supporting roles, having little to do. As I have already mentioned, the film has nothing to do with the Middle Ages. It's just a modern film, with characters with very modern attitudes, but who dress like people from the Middle Ages. After all, this was already predictable in a film of this kind, where creative freedom weighs more than historical rigor. So, we have elements, some weapons, clothing and props from the 14th century in a film that is supposedly set at the time of the Third Crusade, in the 12th century. Incredible, they had time machines?! Nah, just a screenwriter deaf to the warnings **** historical advisor. For this reason, I give a median note to the props, scenery and wardrobe: they may be beautiful, but they are out of place and out of season. The cinematography, however, is quite good and the soundtrack is memorable.

The stagnant machinery of a medieval misfire: A 1.0-star vivid but pathetic drift through high-tension kitsch.2013(1.0)I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) in 2013, and it remains a pathetic 1.0-star record in my archive—a raw revelation of how a sensational folk hero can be trapped in a narrative rhythm that feels 100% mechanical and stagnant. This experience **** the fourth wall of the period epic by infusing Kevin Costner’s raw, accent-free "American" presence into a rhythmic journey that turned a pathetic Sherwood rebellion into a vivid act of storytelling boredom. The narrative rhythm was far from sophisticated; instead, it offered a stagnant cycle of cheesy romance and repetitive archery that lacked the chewy intellectual wit of my top-tier records. While the production leveraged the vivid, sensational scenery and the raw, "bbo-jjak" villainy of Alan Rickman—who provided the only sensational "acting power show" in the film—the overall soul felt stagnant, leaving me in a state of absolute hororong at its uneven pacing. Seeing the vivid, slow-motion arrows and the raw, high-tension attempts at drama provided no emotional payoff, proving that a story about "stealing from the rich" could be a vivid artifact of pure cinematic emptiness. The 95% preservation of my memory is dominated by the stagnant, raw frustration of the bloated runtime and the vivid but pathetic realization that even Brian Adams’ hit song couldn’t save this 1.0-star shipwreck, creating a journey that felt more like a stagnant chore than a permanent, sensational scar on my soul. Unlike the vivid soul of Ghostbusters or the raw brilliance of Push, this encounter possessed a rhythm that was far too stagnant to be forgiven in 2013. It stands in my record as a vivid exercise in 90s excess—a 1.0-star artifact of rhythmic boredom that remained too pathetic to achieve any sensational impact on my psychological archive.

Costner is mis-cast, he just does not fit in pre 1950's time frames. Another movie full of American happy-happy BS which is just so out place in 12th century England during that time's equivalent of a depression (all the men off to war). The attempts at humour just consistently fall flat. Don't waste your time with this one.