Rob Roy (1995)
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones
In the highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, Rob Roy tries to lead his small town to a better future, by borrowing money from the local nobility to buy cattle to herd to market. When the money is stolen, Rob is forced into a Robin Hood lifestyle to defend his family and honour.
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What critics compared Rob Roy to
After scoring big in the leading character role of the reluctant protagonist in "Schindler's List," Liam Neeson reaches his heroic and romantic potential with "Rob Roy," a larger-than-life "Robin Hood" character in a period setting that suits the actor very well.
And if you've seen any of these - or "Braveheart," "Rob Roy," "The Patriot" or "Gladiator," for that matter - then you've seen the new version by director Ridley Scott with Russell Crowe, a torpid action movie about land reform with the exhausted quality of material so thin you can see right through it.
As the alpha villain, Whitehead ( Dunkirk ) leaves as much of an impression here as Tim Roth does in Rob Roy (1995), in part because everyone else is so dutifully restrained.
We no longer see truly great sword-fighting, the kind performed by Liam Neeson and Tim Roth in " Rob Roy " (1995).
That last sentence says “Joe Eszterhas,” who is, of course, source stuffer of this lurid thrill pillow (the film was co-written by Leora Barish and Henry Bean), directed knowingly but with screaming absence of character by Michael Caton-Jones (“Rob Roy,” “The Jackal”).
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones ("Rob Roy," "The Jackal"), it's so utterly convinced it's a tense psycho-sexual thriller that it can't hear the audience laughing at it.
This plodding, pretentious follow-up to 1992's hit replaces Paul Verhoeven's lurid, over-the-top style with the leaden rhythms of Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy), a director who doesn't have a clue what a Basic Instinct movie should be about.
It's left to the director, Michael Caton-Jones (best film: "Rob Roy"; worst: "Memphis Belle"), to heat up the atmospherics with dark photography that punches up the lurid evil of London's most sordid streets.
It is disastrously uninspired direction from a man who once made his name with the glorious Rob Roy .
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The battle sequences are a pale shadow of the lucidly choreographed swordplay in " Rob Roy " (1995); instead of moves we can follow and strategy we can appreciate, Scott goes for muddled closeups of fearsome but indistinct events.
The battles display none of the art that gave at least aesthetic value to the duels in The Phantom Menace and Rob Roy.
Gladiator weds the heroic scope of movies like Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Braveheart, and Rob Roy with the serpentine political treachery of I, Claudius.
When it comes to great movie sword fights, Liam Neeson and Tim Roth took home the gold medal in " Rob Roy " (1995), and the lightsaber battles in "Episode III" are more like isometrics.
If I’m still looking at Rob Roy as one of the best modern examples of a duel, Scott at least looks at exciting and realistic ways to complicate the matter of two prideful men fighting to the death.
As Strider the Ranger, or Aragorn, Viggo Mortensen (Crimson Tide) for me labored under the formidable burden of not being Liam Neeson, who’s been Aragorn in my mind ever since I saw him in Rob Roy .
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While none of the male apes compare to Maurice Evans playing the wiser than he appeared orangutan in the original, Tim Roth ("Rob Roy," "Reservoir Dogs") is effectively menacing and moves in the best ape-like fashion of them all.
Tim Roth, who did such amazing work in Reservior Dogs and Rob Roy, Michael Clarke Duncan, nominated for Best Supporting Actor in The Green Mile , and perhaps the most amazing choice, period film veteran Helena Bonham Carter, who has proven her thespian eloquence so many times why, they're all just a bunch of apes.
Davidson's chief nemesis is General Thade (played by Tim Roth of "Rob Roy") the ruthless leader of the apes, and a hater of humans.