ROBIN HOOD

(Ridley Scott, 2010)

While there is an unmistakeable whiff of something very much like contractual obligation about Robin Hood, that does not mean it is without its pleasures. It is that rare beast, a Summer Blockbuster aimed mostly at grown-ups. As such its extremely wordy - the machinations detailed in the opening act in order to set up the plot are nothing if not torturous, as Dukes plot with Kings who betray Barons and double-cross cousins against the backdrop of Anglo-French tension, political infighting and taxation disputes. All this happens while we are still getting to know the principals, Robin Longstride, a Northern Archer campaigning in France with King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston, tearing lumps of ham off with his bare hands) , and Marion Locksley (Cate Blanchett), an independent war widow who runs the lands owned by her infirm father-in-law (Max Von Sydow). They eventually meet after much complication, and finally Robin learns who he is and what his destiny must be. Strangely, considering its title, this is not really a "Robin Hood" film.
It ends just as Robin and his Merry (more bawdy, in this case) Men become outlaws, pursued by the Sheriff of Nottingham (an underused Matthew MacFadyen) and enemy to King John (Oscar Isaac, terrifically loathsome throughout) and living at one with nature in Sherwood Forest.
Before that it feels almost as if Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland had in mind a different story altogether, and decided to link it with the Robin Hood legend just because they could.
The Robin Hood film it most resembles is Robin and Marian, Richard Lester's superb 1976 elegy for youth, love and heroism lost. That comparison does this film no favours, but it does borrow some of the gritty textures and much of the material with Richard Lionheart in France. Bizarrely it yokes all that to a plot centred around the Magna carta, recasting Robin as a more outright freedom fighter than most narratives do, and throwing in a massive battle on a beach for its climax.
Despite being about 45 minutes too long, it just about works. Scott understands this sort of Epic filmmaking, and nobody visualises it quite like him - this is a film full of casually beautiful shots and sequences, and cinematographer John Mathieson does some staggering work. There are battles and banquets, hissable villains aplenty and dashing heroism, and an incredibly classy cast in even the smallest roles, from Mark Strong as the main villain to William Hurt as a sympathetic court advisor.
But this sort of thing really rests upon the leads; and Crowe and Blanchett make an extremely convincing and likeable couple. Crowe can do this sort of macho hero role in his sleep, and though his accent is all over the British Isles, he is one of the only movie stars we have who has true star quality and actual acting ability, and he combines them here. He and Blanchett - that rarity, a leading lady around his age - have significant chemistry, and she is just as powerful and commanding as he is.
Even when all the mayhem around them is clattering awkwardly along,  an obviously impersonal corporate product and something of a mess from a director capable of so much more, the leads keep the focus intimate and real, and the film benefits massively from that.

DEATH WATCH

(Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)

This unnervingly prophetic film is a product of an era when Science Fiction was still sometimes a genre for grown-ups. This is science fiction without any other generic component; with no aliens or spaceships or futuristic weaponry or fight scenes. Instead what we have are ideas and emotions, the stuff of drama.
Set in a near-future where natural death has been more or less cured by medicine, the story follows two characters. Ronny (Harvey Keitel) allows the television corporation he works for to install a camera behind his eyes. He can no longer sleep or dream, but everything he sees is recorded, forever. The purpose of this procedure is to allow him to monitor the rare death of an individual for a new show, "Death Watch". The chosen individual is Katherine (Romy Schneider). Except Katherine rejects the opportunity, preferring to die alone, with dignity, and goes on the run from the contract she has signed. So Ronny's boss (Harry Dean Stanton) dispatches him to find and befriend her in her last few weeks, and the show goes out as planned. But there are concerns about Ronny's health and sanity, and about Katherine's plans for her own demise.
The show "Death Watch" would sit comfortably on modern television schedules, and a few of the conversations in the film about the morality of the project (Katherine tells the tv executive: "For you, everything is of importance and nothing matters") play like editorials from todays newspapers.
That script, by David Rayfiel, is serious and earnest in an old-fashioned way, its characters patiently drawn, its pacing deliberate. Tavernier conjures up a thick atmosphere. Shooting in Glasgow in 1979, he has captured an industrial city as it ceases to function and just before the inevitable resuscitation of the 1980s, and so Death Watch is filled with lovely shots of this crumbling, once-magisterial city, its wastelands and backstreets, the skies above rolling with black unease.
If it is a trifle unrelenting in its gloominess - and Pierre William Glenn's photography ensures that it is never less than beautifully downbeat - well, that may be because it deals in big themes. Tavernier and Rayfiel are interested in death and our response to it, and their character study of Katherine finally suggests that for her, death is a rebellion against the dystopian world she lives in, where there is little capacity for either misery or joy. The final act - playing out by a Loch, where Katherine is reunited with her ex-husband (Max Von Sydow) has its own intensity of feeling, a genuine spring of regret and sadness which is extremely affecting.
It is, however, an odd film, tonally uneven and perhaps a little too ambitious. The moments of poetry sprinkled throughout do not always blend with the melodrama and contrivance of much of the material. But the cast is tremendous - Keitel's nervy presence contrasts nicely with Schneider's luminous spirit, and they both have terrific scenes with Dean Stanton - while Tavernier's direction is masterful throughout. He captures Glasgow and the Highlands with a few exhilarating crane shots, and chooses to film a chase through the docks in one long, incredible steadicam movement. His determination to be serious also works, ultimately, in the films favour, granting it a chilly gravitas denied to much science fiction.