Robin Hood (2010)

Every era gets the Robin Hood it needs…Now director Ridley Scott and writer Brian Helgeland have given us an intelligent, layered story suited to our grim, patience-trying times.

The entire cast is superb. Crowe's an ideal Robin Hood-born to play the role-he's fully in command but human to the core. He owns it.

Grown-up but not too serious; action-packed but not juvenile… Not only is this the mullet-free Robin Hood movie we’ve been waiting decades for, it’s also Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe at their most entertaining since Gladiator.

Scott has an eye -- and it's a very good one -- for sieges of castles, charging horsemen, hand-to-hand combat, glistening swords arcing through the air and deadly arrows whistling toward helpless targets.

This Robin Hood is mostly a smart, muscular entertainment; it doesn’t breathe new life into a genre as did “Gladiator,’’ Scott’s first pairing with Russell Crowe, but it’s a brawny reimagining of a beloved old myth, a period popcorn movie turned out with professionalism and gusto.