The people behind this movie were clearly big fans of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, as this movie is essentially The Dark Knight: Medieval Edition. That might be setting the bar too high, it isn’t really in the same league as any in that trilogy. Instead, it is a mildly competent take on the Robin Hood legend that is all the more disappointing for the better movie that seems to be just beneath the surface.

Comparing Robin Hood to The Dark Knight is easy, and not a new observation. Batman’s connection to Robin Hood has been noted before, though no movie I can think of has made the comparison so blatant. But this version of Robin Hood doesn’t stop there. It opens with Robin’s adventures during the crusades, with a plot points that are right out of Prince of Thieves. But the battles scenes in the Middle East are shot like a modern war movie, they look like something out of Saving Private Ryan with bows and arrows in place of guns. There are other moments evocative of other films and genres. The whole thing becomes kind of a mishmash of other popular things that doesn’t really find an identity of its own.

The plot is Robin Hood. As noted above, there is a stronger Batman influence here, but the story is the Robin Hood story as you have heard it. Robin of Locksley returns from the Crusades to find Nottingham in shambles. The Sheriff has had him declared dead and seized his lands in the name of the crown. He uses the war effort to continually raise the taxes. Robin conceals his identity with a hood and begins to fight the Sheriff, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

The best descriptor of the Robin Hood’s execution of it plot is competent. It is rarely as exciting as it wants to be, but neither does it fall down completely. It just sort of is. Jamie Foxx as Little John is fun and no one currently plays a villain better than Ben Mendelsohn. It all works, but barely. It manages to be both engaging and disappointing at the same time. This seems destined to be one of those forgotten blockbusters that in two or three years people will be surprised to hear that this movie came out.

To its credit, Robin Hood does try to make something current and comprehensible from the progressive nature of the Robin Hood story, building on the robs from the rich to give to the poor to make a movie that at least tries to say something about the growing inequality of the modern day. It doesn’t do a lot to mask other failures, but an action movie at least attempting to have something to say is at least a good sign.

Robin Hood is not very good, but if it becomes a TNT regular in a few years it will be worth catching at least once.

**1/2