The Last Of Robin Hood

Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer

Aug 26, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

Errol Flynn, famed womanizer and one of the biggest stars (The Adventures of Robin Hood) of the classic Hollywood studio era, died in the company of a much younger woman. The underage actress was Beverly Aadland, Flynn’s protégée and fiancée, whom he’d been romantically involved with since she was only 15 years old.

Flynn’s final days get the biopic treatment in The Last of Robin Hood, where Kevin Kline plays the late actor with loads of slimy charm. Dakota Fanning portrays Beverly Aadland with wide-eyed innocence, and Susan Sarandon plays the pushy showbiz mother who not only facilitates the affair, but—more disturbingly—turns a blind eye to her daughter gallivanting about with a man who famously (and narrowly) avoided statutory rape convictions just years earlier. This film doesn’t point any fingers—not at the oily seducer, the negligent mother, or the teenage “bad girl”—though you almost wish it would. The strong cast plays it as if no one was at fault here, which leaves this love story’s more uncomfortable implications feeling under-addressed.

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