Robin and Little John are middle-aged men in this new chapter of the Robin Hood legend. Returning from the Crusades through France, they are present when the crazy King Richard the Lionhearted meets a ludicrous and undignified death. The two comrades decide that it is time to go home again. Things it turns out, haven't changed all that much in Sherwood Forest. They meet Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett hunting deer near their old encampment. The people are suffering from the same old injustices. Robin's nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham, is still in control. The biggest change has happened in the life of Maid Marian; she has been transplanted to Kirkly Abbey where she is the Mother Superior. But not for long. When the Sheriff arrives to close down the Abbey and imprison the nuns on the orders of the anti-papist new king, Robin "rescues" her. They flee into the forest where their long-lapsed love is soon rekindled. Surrounded by a band of men and boys from the countryside who remember his heroic exploits in the past, Robin awaits a confrontation with the forces of law and order.

Director Richard Lester's forte is comedy and rousing action sequences. His pictures move with antic haste. But screenwriter William Goldman slows this movie down to a near crawl with plodding romantic dialogue and some feeble attempts to comment on the nature of heroism. Fortunately the sturdy and appealing performances by Sean Connery as Robin, Nicol Williamson as Little John, and Robert Shaw as the Sheriff of Nottingham almost redeem the mediocre screenplay. Audrey Hepburn (returning to the movies after an eight year absence) has lost none of her beauty and screen presence.