Yeah that Max Von Sydow...

The slightest change to the accent equilibrium can drag you out of suspension of disbelief. Crowe's is a shocker. What is that? Brummie filtered through stock Irish?

The Tudors -an Irish co-production - is one of the worst for that; every non-major role (and King Henry) is taken by an Irish actor, many of them familiar from Father Ted. The court of Henry VIII and the Vatican were largely populated by Irishmen it would seem.

It's charming that Peter O'Toole, as the Italian Pope, is at the stage of his career where he can't be arsed with all that and rightly emotes in Peter O'Tooleish. In the same scene an actor will speaka lika datta.

A friend of mine (who tried to mimic my soft Glaswegian and ended up somewhere over Finian's Rainbow) was once voice coach to the young Heath Ledger. I now know why these actors get so confused.

and a smidgen of Ringo. I'm going to pretend this never happened and wait for a Shane Meadows/Paddy Considine version.

the trailer looks excellent a big dollop of arrow tastic burning torch bickering with Marian scenery chewing sheriff climbing drawbridges with axes fun it's Robin Hood a folk legend big enough and ugly enough to look after itself there's two more along in minute. Rdiley scotss been knwo to turn out a half decent film every now and then and Russel Crowe gives good hero bring it on!

But Crowe does at least 4 accents in the trailer alone. Coming from Nottingham, I can be precious about such things and I'd hoped that Crowe would put a bit of effort in. But then I don't really recall any stabs at an accent from Crowe before - just generic Crowe.