On his role of Guy of Gisborne in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Michael said, “It's always so much more interesting to play the villains and this guy is a real son of a bitch.”

Trying to taunt Robin into giving up his woodsy hiding spot, Guy yells into the darkness, “Robin of the Hood! Son of a devil worshipper! Your father died a coward, cursing your name and squealing like a stuck pig!” Yeah, he was pretty rotten.

Morgan Creek Productions’ Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves arrived in theatres in June of 1991. Still close enough to the eighties to give it a bad MTV video look and feel. In fact, some say the whole movie was made to sell the theme song, "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" by Bryan Adams, which went on to be a very popular tune played at early 90s weddings. Yuck! Sadly, that song is about the only memorable thing from the movie except for some cheesy out of context lines by Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham. “Locksley. I'll cut your heart out with a spoon.” “Robin Hood steals money from my pocket, forcing me to hurt the public, and they love him for it? That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas.”

I think if the director, Kevin Reynolds, [who later directed Michael Wincott in The Count of Monte Cristo] had stuck to making a “campy” version of the classic story movie goers would have forgiven the awful accents and silly lines. However, he threw in some gruesome violence against helpless people including children, suggestive abuse of women, and a completely unnecessary witch as consort to the Sheriff. When Rickman clamors down the winding staircase into a dungeon filled with smoke and colored lights, for a moment I waited to see if Ozzy Osborne was coming out to perform a song; just adding to the “hair-band” music video look.

Kevin Costner tries to come across heroic, but loses us with his bad attempts at an accent.  Even the usually flawless Morgan Freeman had trouble with his Moorish accent for Robin's sidekick, Azeem. I guess that is what you get when you only hire a few Brits to fill out an American and in Michael’s case Canadian cast. Michael’s accent was fine for me, however I did read a review which said, “Check out Nottingham's cousin (Michael Wincott), who sounds like a character from the Disney ride Pirates of the Caribbean. Arrr, matey!” Ouch!

You don’t need a story synopsis of any Robin Hood movie as they usually follow the classic tale, but in RH:PoT there were lots of liberties taken with characters and timelines. {We never saw Prince John, and I missed his thumb-sucking. Oh wait that was the Disney version.} For this loooong telling, Robin and his not-so-merry band of outlaws do steal some stuff, but you really don’t get that he shares it with the poor, and there is just not enough of a leadership quality to believe those retched forest dwellers would immediately follow young Locksley. Who was not a prince, so WTF is with the title anyway?

Completely out of place was Christian Slater as Will Scarlet. Don’t get me started on him and why he got so much publicity and attention for his sorry performance of an unimportant character. The friendship between Little John and Robin Hood never really grows to what we are used to seeing, and Friar Tuck is okay, but was pretty much there as a butt of fat jokes. Maid Marian, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio is at first full of spunk, then turned into the “damsel in distress” whiny screamer. Besides the fact that she was too old to play the “maid”, the best thing about her was her hair.

Wow, it sounds like I hated this movie. Actually despite all of the negatives, it was sort of fun to watch; if only to laugh at the shear lameness of it. Or, in my case to hear Alan Rickman say his lines and make those famous expressions, and to see Michael on a horse dressed all in black. I grew up as a fan of the Errol Flynn version and the previously mentioned Disney cartoon tale, so I can forgive the campiness and lack of direction this movie had.

What I can’t forgive is the length of the movie. I say if you can’t tell your story in 96 minutes don’t make a movie, make a mini-series or trilogy. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves could have been a 96 minute movie with good editing and better writing. Must be is why God invented the FF button.

Maybe I just lost interest after Guy was used to test the quality of Spanish steel. Or maybe it was when they exposed the audience to Kevin Costner’s Bull Durham ass, or was that his body double? Yet again, maybe it was Sean Connery as King Richard showing up at the end to attend the wedding. {The real King Richard I was only about 40 years old when he returned from the Crusades.} Or maybe I couldn’t get past the way Robin and Azeem came ashore near white cliffs at Dover then visited Hadrian’s wall (see the picture of “Sycamore Gap” next to this review) in Northumberland on their way to Nottinghamshire the tree and the heart of Nottingham are about 200 miles apart.

 All in all, this is a movie that any fan of Michael should see. For what he was given to work with he performed well. He was young and just getting into the whole film acting thing, so I think it was pretty good for him. I once heard he thought RH:PoT would be a bigger stepping stone for his career than it became, but if you read message boards and polls of where fans first saw him, Guy of Gisborne ranks up toward the top. He shouldn’t be too let down. He certainly never let us down.