Although I'm not sure the world needed another one, Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” is absolutely worth a watch. Its a cracking yarn at a rapid pace with a fairly thick plot and a spectacular battle scene at the end that leaves you well entertained and a little enlightened historically. It clearly sets up a no doubt profitable franchise placing the outlawed Robin Hood and his Merry Men in Sherwood Forest for a predictable series of jovial robin’-the-rich-to-feed-the-poor romps. It lacks the fantastic villainy of Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham from the 1991 movie (fortunately it also lacks the theme tune!) but Mark Strong's Godfrey villain is a proper rotter. Both Crowe and Blanchet are fairly wooden I feel – and despite his grump, Crowe’s supposedly Northern accent is distinctly dodgy, as one journalist said, portrayed "Robin Hood [as] an Irishman who took frequent holidays in Australia." But the film stands up regardless.
The history varies in its accuracy. Richard Lionheart’s Death is accurate-ish, with a bit of poetic license taken to an incident that in truth doesn’t really do the brave warrior-king justice. All of the Magna Carta stuff was, while interesting, quite wrong I think. King John did sign the Magna Carta with the English Barons in 1215 and instead of the French King invading England, John invaded France (interestingly marrying off his bastard daughter Joan to Llewellyn The Great to keep the peace while he was away.)
However, one dark little historical nugget was surprisingly accurate of particular importance to me. Early in the movie, Richard Lionheart asks Crowe – playing Crusader archer Robin Longstride - to tell him if he thought God would be happy with his the King’s Crusading efforts. Crowe, controversially, advises the King that he did not think so. When asked why, he spoke of “the massacre at Acre” and how it ensured the King did not deserve to conquer Jerusalem. It struck a loud note with me because I visited Acre (now Akko), just north of Tel Aviv, in 1999 and when I learnt of the decidedly disturbing 1191 event, wrote this at the time...
After Richard I seized Acre, he realised that the booty of most importance was not the treasure they had captured from the Saracen occupiers, but the 3,000 or so civilians they had chosen not to butcher as they swamped the city. He decided to use these to negotiate a truce with Saladin who had watched the collapse of Acre through the Anglo-Norman barrier that prevented his route of rescue. Richard demanded the release of his captives in an exchange, for Saladin had around one and a half thousand prisoners he knew of and of course the return of the True Cross, which he was given to believe Saladin had brought with. The negotiations went on for some time, and a deadline of a month that Richard had set for the exchange of prisoners passed without result. Richard grew impatient and eventually snapped.
In full view of the watching Saracen hordes, his army and he led the 2,700 men, women and children out of the city under protection of the Knights, and brought them to the top of a hill just outside the citadel. There they dramatically put all the prisoners to the sword, beheading and then disembowelling them while the Knights held off wave after wave of devastated Saracen soldiers aghast by what they were forced to watch. Rumours that the victims would have swallowed gold coins to save them from their captors led to the wholesale gutting of everyone. When not a living soul remained, the army marched back into the city. Relations between Richard and Saladin soured from that moment, oddly, and the Muslim resolve to rid their land of the Crusader plague grew stronger. It is a tale that horrifies me. As the Crusader soldiers returned to their halls - the halls I have just been walking through under the modern town, they would have listened to the screams of woe as the Saladin’s men checked the victims for survivors. What a horrible story, just horrible, and perhaps hammered the nail in the coffin of Richard’s Crusade, for if either Christian or Muslim God existed surely Richard’s actions would have disqualified him from the halls of fame that house the great conquerors of Jerusalem.
Richard never did conquer Jerusalem, and after a fairly unproductive campaign, left the Holy Lands empty handed and defeated the following year.
UPDATE: Something I actually fogot to mention was that it is believed by some that in his anger and disgust at the horrible atrocity at Acre, Saladin buried the True Cross - which he had captured at the battle of Hattin in 1187 - under the door way of the The Ummayad Mosque in Damascus so that every entering Muslim would walk on it!
