Released the year I was born, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a panto of a period drama starring Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Alan Rickman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The story takes it’s cue from the adage at the centre of the mythology: “rob the rich to feed the poor”. However, the film also works in a revenge narrative, which the film takes up following the death of Lord Loksley (Brian Blessed), father of Robin Hood (Kevin Costner), at the hands of The Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman).
The eponymous hero returns home from fighting in the crusades under King Richard I or Richard the Lionheart (Sean Connery) to find his home in ruin and the kingdom of England not much better. In the absence of it’s monarch, the nation has fallen to the whims of The Sheriff of 
Nottingham, a greedy pantomime villain of an antagonist who seeks the throne, assisted by Mortianna (Geraldine McEwan), a witch who raised him and advises on his various political machinations.
I fell in love with this movie when I was very young and, for all the disillusions that go along with being a 20 something, my fondness persists even now. The main reason has to be the score. As the film opens, credits flashing intermittently over roaming footage of The Bayeux Tapestry, the music swells and so do you. The brass is played to rouses listeners for the swordplay, daring do and acts of heroism that make up the plot.
As a child the love interest was not something I wholly understood. I was not opposed but it seemed a somewhat remote and far off aspect to the story that punctuated the fighting and rabble rousing that was so understandable by comparison. Yet watching the movie as an older audience member I was surprised (pleasantly it should be said) that Kevin Costner and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio have such good chemistry on screen. Mastrantonio plays the Maid Marian, cousin of the reigning monarch. Though Robin of Locksley is love with her, the Sheriff seeks her hand in marriage as a means of gaining the throne.
For all my fondness, it has to be said that the movie is not without some problems. First there is the issue of geography. When we see Robin return home from the wars in the Holy Land, he arrives at Dover Beach. Ten miniutes later he and his friend Azeem (Morgan Freeman) have arrived at Hadrian’s Wall, a monument that is situated at the other end of the country.
More than that, Robin Hood himself is played by a actor who has made no attempt at a British accent. Any British accent in fact. On balance, Costner is not the only one. It is more noticeable with Costner for the simple fact that he’s the stat. However, both Christian Slater and Michael McShane (who play Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck respectively) both slip in and out of accent in voices that are best 
described as mid-Atlantic. Beyond the trouble with the voice, we have issues with the hair; for the whole of the film Costner has hair that is quaffed and in some shots looks to resemble a mullet – an ’80s hangover perhaps.
Even so, the movie is held together by Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham, camping it up and chewing the scenery. The performance is reminiscent of the dynamic in the original Die Hard (1988), which was released only three years prior to Prince of Thieves . In both films, Rickman plays opposite a younger American actor whose film career is on the ascent. In either case the American goes on to become a bankable onscreen presence. That said, in both films it is Rickman that walks away with the performance, which is entertaining even now.
Also, the pure spectacle is still impressive. Not only has it dated well but it looks good on its own terms. The photography isn’t a clean as you would expect of a modern Hollywood blockbuster. That aside, the horsemanship, the fight scenes, the sequence where whole areas of woodland are set ablaze all look impeccable.
It has to be said that you seldom watch the same movie twice. I cannot see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as I once did. The sheen is gone. Yet if ever I want an afternoon to indulgence it is, now and always, a very viable option.
