This romantic epic takes a bittersweet look at Robin Hood and Maid Marian in their later years. After King Richard's death in the Holy Land, Robin Hood (Sean Connery) and his trusty companion Little John finally return home to England. Despite his two-decade absence, Robin immediately determines to find his long-lost love, Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn). He discovers her in a convent, where she retired after waiting fruitlessly for him to return from the Crusades. Now she is comfortably settled there as the Mother Superior, and does not fully welcome Robin's return. But she has not quite forgotten her feelings for him, either...Unfortunately, past rivalries die hard, too, and the middle-aged swashbuckler also finds himself drawn into a war against his old nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham.
In this gorgeous, masterly elegy for a vanished age, an older and disillusioned Robin Hood returns from the Crusades to find Sherwood empty of outlaws, Marian in a nunnery and the Sheriff of Nottingham still fiddling the books. James Goldman's script has a wonderful way with satire and myth-mongering, while Richard Lester has the sharpest eye for historical detail. Audrey Hepburn was lured out of retirement to play Marian and she is exquisite, but it's Sean Connery's gruff, greybeard performance that ennobles, rather than dominates the picture. Great support, too, from Robert Shaw's Sheriff and Ronnie Barker's perfectly judged “heavy relief” as Friar Tuck. What a pity it flopped at the box-office.
Halliwell's Film Guide
A kind of serious parody of medieval life, after the fashion of The Lion in Winter but much glummer; in fact, nothing to laugh at at all.
Radio Times
Halliwell's Film Guide
