Absolutely brilliant

A Masterpiece!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A wonderful Robin Hood tale that takes place some 20 years after his earlier adventures in and around Sherwood Forrest. Robin is aging, naturally, along with the rest of the characters we've all come to know. Although getting older, Robin is still high spirited and out to get whom he deems enemies - he's still fit for battle.Robin finds Marion running a convent as a nun and a nurse. Marion has tried to forget Robin while he was away, she's done a pretty decent job of it but seeing Robin again and traveling with him she finds herself still deeply in-love with him.This movie has a surprise ending for first time viewers OR for those, like myself, who has not seen this movie in many, many years and has forgotten the ending. I won't give it away but I can say what happens leaves Robin looking like a hero in the eyes of his followers.Wonderful movie - well worth watching.9/10

Several reviewers have noted the superb cast all of whom were working at top form in this film. Robin and Marian is, in my opinion, the best Robin Hood film ever made or that ever will be made. I would refute the criticism that it is for an older audience. When I saw it first I was 27 tears old and working as a projectionist in a theatre that ran the film shortly after release. Forty years later the sublimity of its vision has only deepened though it was apparent right from the firs. Let us now, however, consider its director, Richard Lester. No director has ever had a career of perfect films but Lester's has a few more than many.Starting with The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film that showcased the antics of the Goons (yes, folks, there was a predecessor to Monty Python) and The Beatles' two movies, Lester built a style and competence in storytelling with a mix of humor, drama and great humanity. His The Three and Four Musketeers remain the best Musketeers movies ever made and Juggernaut is the sole disaster movie made in the late 1960s and 1970s that remains worth watching decades later. Add to those Petulia, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, How I Won the War, The Knack and The Ritz and you have a body of work of which any director could be proud. We may love Errol Flynn's Robin Hood or Alan Rickamn's Sheriff of Nottingham but no prior or subsequent film is anything like as beautiful as this film. The whole film is worth watching for the scene between Connery and Hepburn when she discovers the battle scars on his body or for Robert Shaw's disdain of the ignorant noblemen who've come to him from Ian Holm's sniveling King John. Like the arrow shot from Nicole Williamson's bow in the final scene this film rises up into the sky and simply never comes down. I don't care how old you are or at what stage your love for another has reached you do yourself and your lover a disservice if you do not sit down and watch this along with what I consider the rest of the eight most romantic films of all time: City Lights (1931) It Happened One Night (1934) The Philadelphia Story (1940) The Princess Bride (1987) Moonstruck (1987) Il Postino (1994) Afterglow (1997)

The original title for this movie was "The Death Of Robin Hood" but the studio wanted a more commercial title, and sent out all the wrong messages to cinema goers. Following on from what many consider to be his best role outside of James Bond, that of Daniel Dravot in "The Man Who Would Be King", Sean Connery plays Robin Hood (a balding, grey bearded, bruised, scarred and arthritic one, but still Robin Hood) opposite the still impossibly gorgeous Katherine Hepburn as Maid Marian. This is no swashbuckling agile Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn or Kevin Costner. This is a much bleaker, more realistic Robin. But still a Robin who could not resist a good fight, and was trying to regain his youth by reliving past exploits. Robert Shaw's arrogant but intelligent Sheriff of Nottingham was everything you'd expect from the hard drinking Irish man. It was a shame he would die only two years later, as for all his flaws he was one hell of an actor.The final fight between Robin and the Sheriff was brutal as two worn out old men (barely able to lift their swords towards the end) hacked away at each other. The mood of the movie is realistically bleak at times, yet since Richard Lester was director, we get some silly scenes with humour in that seem to be totally out of place and that almost belong in another movie!! I don't know why he insisted on doing this in his movies (see Superman 2, where during Superman battling the three Kriptonian Super Villains a load of awful comedy scenes (wigs flying off, ice cream hitting people in faces) are present that takes away from the intensity of it all!! Of the supporting cast Richard Harris has a cameo as Richard The Lionheart (same role Connery would cameo in Costner's "Prince Of Thieves") and Denholm Elliot is as reliable as ever.I think this movie is badly under appreciated by the critics. And maybe if they had stuck with the original title, and sold it differently it might have done differently.

Well, this is a strange and depressing entry into the post-modern 70s sweepstakes of "what can we do with iconic characters these days?", coming a few years before "Tarazan: Legend of Greystoke" and "Excalibur", and directed by the guy who made The Monkees famous, Richard Lester. What the F? Anybody who's seen the film knows how reprehensible the ending is, how out of focus and how lacking in dramatic impetus it truly is. What I want to talk about is what a wasted opportunity we have here, because Lester's comedic talent is still very strong, and there's some really great moments in the film which really kind of add up to... what? A kind of self-serious betrayal.In generic terms, not much else to comment on. The action scenes are really awful, not bad in the terms of Richard Greene era Robin Hood, but I mean the movie starts off with a scene of a guy literally throwing an arrow into King Richard's (Richard Harris) neck, felling him with a blow as ridiculous as his presence in the film. Harris hams it up, Nicholson wishes he'd got the fun and short part, Connery doesn't seem to want to support the film... yet, it all works amazingly well, up till the last reel or so of the film. A pity. Better luck next time Robin?