Robin Hood (2010)

(M) ★★

Director: Ridley Scott.

Cast: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, William Hurt, Oscar Isaac, Danny Huston.

Russell was always up for a spot of LARPing.

A MORE accurate title for this film might have been The Man Who Would Become Robin Hood, or even Robin Hood: The Prequel.

Those expecting a typical Robin Hood adventure, featuring the man in tights living in Sherwood Forest with his merry men, taking from the rich to give to the poor, riding through the glen, battling wits with the Sheriff of Nottingham - all that stuff - will be sorely disappointed.

Instead we get an ungainly amalgam of Gladiator and Braveheart (with a dash of The Wife Of Martin Guerre) that ends where the Robin Hood story traditionally begins - there's even a title card at the film's finale that says so.

Robin Hood is Robin Longstride here, a soldier in King Richard The Lionheart's army, which is plundering and sacking its way home after the crusades. After falling afoul of the king, Robin and his men (Allan A'Dayle, Little John and Will Scarlet) decide to head for home, but find themselves impersonating a royal envoy that is bound for England to deliver the sad news that the king has been killed in battle.

From there, Robin and co set up shop in Nottingham, where our hero meets Marian Locksley - whose husband Robin is impersonating - and our heroes soon become embroiled in a conspiracy to bring about a French invasion of England.

For the most part, the film works really well. Crowe is a good Hood, Blanchett is a superb Maid Marian, and the battle scenes are as good as you would expect from the man behind Gladiator. There's also a deft comedic touch in the right places - Robin's merry men and Mark Addy as Friar Tuck make sure of that - and the gentle laughs are spaced well between the sword-swinging.

So why is this only a two-star film? The problem lies in the bigger story around Robin, which attempts to make him into a Middle Ages Martin Luther King rather than the cheeky philanthropist of the old tales. Robin Hood gets bogged down repeatedly in its exploration of 12th century socio-politics, international relations and medieval English finance which adds great context at first, but soon becomes a millstone around the movie's neck as Robin is forced to become a William Wallace-style character, uniting the feuding noblemen behind a cranky king to fend off the French.

Even this would have been forgivable if not for the ending, which pushes all the wrong buttons in its attempt to be an iconic grand finale and effectively undoes much of the movie's good work.

With its cast of thousands and impressive sets, Robin Hood looks great but this is not the gritty re-imagining of the Merry Men that many had hoped for - in fact, it hardly even counts as a Robin Hood film.

The Other Guys

(M) ★★

Director: Adam McKay.

Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Steve Coogan, Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes.

"It's Donnie from New Kids On The Block! I love those guys!
Hey jump in the photo, why don't ya?"

FIRST, the good news: the combination of Ferrell and Wahlberg is a great one and their chemistry elevates this comedy.

The bad news: the combination of Ferrell and Wahlberg is still not enough to save this misfire.

It's disappointing because the potential here is huge. After a rambunctious opening involving NYPD's top cops Highsmith and Danson - played with great cheek by Samuel L Jackson and Dwayne Johnson - the film pulls the carpet out from under the viewer by killing them off quickly in horribly tone-breaking and idiotically absurd fashion.

Their deaths pave the way for two other cops to step up and become heroes of the city, and disgraced short-fused officer Terry Hoitz (Wahlberg) and his mismatched accountancy-loving partner Allen Gamble (Ferrell) hope it will be them.

But to become the best of the best, Hoitz and Gamble have to solve a case, and the script has a hard time finding a straight-ahead one for them to investigate, leaving the plot to wander aimlessly for much of the running time as they chase a shoddy businessman (Coogan) and get chased by a number of shadowy forces.

One of the biggest problems is that The Other Guys is unsure of what kind of film it wants to be. After its promising opening, it seems destined to become a kind of buddy cop/action parody and this is when it works best - the real ramifications of being close to a huge explosion is one of the funnier moments, although the realistic laughs in the face of blockbuster conventions clashes badly with the unwieldly absurdist moments that are commonplace throughout.

The film also wants to make some kind of satirical comment about the Global Financial Crisis, as evidenced by its end credit graphics detailing corporate excess and how a ponzi scheme works, but aside from a handful of throw-away moments, this attempt at making a statement is almost non-existent.

What we're left with is an uneven comedy that has a major fail rate for laughs. Many potentially hilarious set-ups go begging because of botched punchlines and it seems as if Ferrell's best improvs have somehow been left on the floor (in fact, some of the trailer's funniest moments aren't even in the film or have been changed for lesser takes).

It's only when Ferrell and Wahlberg go head-to-head that The Other Guys sparkles and its unfortunate that such a good pairing is wasted. You almost wish for a sequel just so they can make the most of this chemistry second time around.