I managed to catch first day show of Robin Hood, latest of Ridley Scott re-team with Russell Crowe. It was good, good if you consider not many good action movies getting released these days. But it wasn’t fantastic also, not at the level of Gladiator. Robin Hood fails to reach five stars. Some say, It is wrong to compare this movie with Gladiator since they are totally different plots, but poster asked me to. It said “from the creator of Gladiator”.

Story of this movie has its own problems. Having made this movie over and over for decades from the beginning of movie history itself, it would’ve been disaster to present same version of story. So, naturally it’s different, different from any of the versions you would have heard. Movie starts with a regular archer in English army then he becomes a knight and ends with him becoming Robin of the Hood, the outlaw the Legend himself. So, if you buy tickets expecting to watch the jungle life of Robin Hood and his “looting the rich – serving the poor” story, you will be disappointed. This movie is kind of prequel for the story so far presented.

As expected, action scenes are fantastic. Few of wonderful action sequences are sprinkled throughout the movie. Yes, it is not action-packed movie like gladiator (see, I am comparing again!), instead action-sprinkled. Movie starts with one castle invasion scene there are couple of ambushes in-between and there is a battle in the end, in Saving Private Ryan style. That’s it! If you watch trailer in YouTube, that’s all action combined! In this movie Robin Hood is more of a knight than archer as you would expect. But couple of arrows he shoots (in whole movie) are very impressive. They showed them in slow motion, with dust particles spattered! Yes, it’s the same poster shot.

This movie producer has done very good favour for UK tourism industry. All the scenes are well shot, in very nice angle and quality. Village, jungle, London, Thames, Sea, Beach, each one of them is wallpaper shot. Movie did very very little technical mistakes in terms of 12th century settings, it was well researched and designed, Houses, Castles, Battering Rams, ships, farms etc. Felt like playing age of Empires again with actual humans.

Thumbs down: Nothing in particular, except these questions.

• Little of Robin Hood the outlaw is presented. It’s all about Robin the Knight.
• Numbers, The army of England looked very small. They fight French army with 200ish men?
• All English archers ride horses? They fight with swords too?
• Sentiments, Husband and then father of Kate get killed in ambush. She does not seem to care much. May be it was the way she was, but I feel it wasn’t well presented.