Robin Hood and the Laffer Curve

I’ve been assuming that Ridley Scott’s interpretation of the Robin Hood saga must be terrible. After all, it’s nearly a decade since Black Hawk Down, Scott’s last properly good movie. But now AO Scott pops up in the New York Times to suggest, though he may not mean to, that the movie has something going for it after all:

You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles. Don’t tread on him!

Alas, because it is a Ridley Scott movie even this probably can’t save the movie even though this eminently sensible philosophical outlook is more nuanced than the cartoonish “steals from the rich and gives to the poor” mythology that dominates Hoodology.