Famous tales, especially the old ones, are always open to reinterpretation, but even by gritty, grisly, grounded standards, Michael Sarnoski’s The Death Of Robin Hood takes some hefty liberties. While many adaptions about England’s most famous outlaw (take that, Dick Turpin) have seen him clad in green, sticking it to the man and laughing heartily with his merry men, there’s nothing particularly merry about this brutal, uncompromising, deconstructionist take.
Painting a particularly grim picture that the stories of Robin Hood were all merely propaganda spread by himself, in actuality the film suggests that the man was a bloodthirsty brigand who actually slaughtered the rich and didn’t much of a shit about the poor.
Obviously, while this’ll give Robin Hood purists a conniption, Sarnoski is a filmmaker who has always been big on cinematic regret. While he had a terminal Lupita Nyong’o wander through an apocalypse in A Quiet Place: Day One, it’s his 2021 feature debut, Pig, that provides an understanding about what the director is trying to achieve here.
In 1247, we find that an aged, grizzled Robin Hood living in exile from a world full of people wanting to avenge themselves on his evil ways. You see, despite the stories that painted the notorious outlaw as a force of rebellious good, in reality we discover that Robin was nothing more than a vicious criminal who killed wantonly and upset a great many families as he did so. We discover this the hard way, when we witness an old, tired Robin murder a young woman seeking revenge for her family and bury her with the numerous other people who have failed over the years. Yes, Robin may be filled with mounting regret in his winter years, but he finds that he still can’t stop himself from surviving no matter how hard he tries.
One day, he’s visited by his last surviving comrade, Little John, who has taken over a farm and has found a modicum of peace with a wife and daughter. However, he’s come to Robin for help as a neighbouring family has forced him to move from the land and have taken his wife and child into the bargain. Agreeing to help his last surviving “Merry Man”, both Robin and John shed a disturbing amount of blood trying to retake the farm, but after Little John’s wife is killed and Robin is forced to shoot an arrow into the skull of a fleeing little boy, the neighbouring family finds out and in the ensuing revenge, Robin is gravely injured.
He awakes in a Priory on a remote island, being tended for by the prioress, Sister Brigid, but as his wounds a being tended to, Robin starts to find a respite from his savage existence. But does he actually deserve one? After a lifetime of dealing out pain and violence, has the notorious criminal earned a life of peace when his inhuman acts have caused misery to so many?
There’s a sense that The Death Of Robin Hood may have been mis-sold to audiences a little simply by the expectations such a film puts out. With the appearance of an unfeasibly grizzled and leathery Hugh Jackman as a “hero” with a less than glorious past, some will think (as I initially did) that we’d be getting some medieval version of Logan, that swaps claws for a bow and offers yet another broken-down legend one last minute shot at redemption. Conversely, the time period and the grueling surroundings that this film plays with also invokes the savage lust for vengeance we got with Robert Eggers’ The Northman; but anyone psyched up for a gore-streaked redemption story might need to check their expectations at the door. You see, anyone who has seen Pig, will already know that Sarnoski is far more interested in restraint and the internal struggle of men capable of great violence. Simply put, you shouldn’t be expecting derring-do – or should that be derring-don’t?
Yes, it’s a bit of a spoiler warning to reveal that all the medieval brutality occurs entirely within the first third of of the film, while the rest of the story deals with Robin’s rehabilitation in a more spiritual sense, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t great things to be found. While Sarnoski can’t quite match Eggers for sustaining unbridled realism for the time period, there’s enough mud, blood and freezing mist to make you wish that your local cinema didn’t have such healthy air-con. Similarly, when the film does get down to some super-gnarly blood-letting, it doesn’t hold back as we see this former hero thud arrows into the heads of fleeing children, open the throats of young women looking for revenge and rip the hands of attackers into pieces with his bare mitts in excruciating detail. Of course, those who are more enamored of the myth of Robin Hood will no doubt be horrified to see the folk hero slaughtering little ‘uns like a lunatic, but you can tell that the director is all-in when it comes to examining the deconstruction of a legend by a man who can’t even remember what was story and what was real anymore.
But while inverting expectations, there’s a sense that Sarnoski leans on the restrained brooding and grizzled regret a tad too much, and the ending, while powerful in its own way, will lose anyone expecting something close to a big, third act fight. There may be parallels but Logan this is not, and challenging themes of forgiveness and guilt take precedence over more conventional movie redemption as Robin realises that the only monster that needs vanquishing is himself.
However, regardless about what you may feel about the film’s message and its treatment of the titular character, there’s no denying that the performances are truly impressive. We’ve seen Jackman go dark before, but watching him play a man who simply can’t stop himself from dying purely on reflex no matter how many atrocities weigh on his soul, is genuinely breathtaking. Knowing that he should have been dead a long time ago,the fact that he continues to preservere is actually the inverse of the unkillable Logan and watching his internal process as his emotional armour gradually strips away is impressive. Elsewhere, Jodie Comer is the bastion of calm that helps Robin shed those leathery defence mechanisms and as she’s never really been known to give a bad performance, it’s no great surprise to discover that she delivers yet another one, despite being burdened with a hairstyle right out of Prince Valiant. However, I’m still trying to process the fact that Little John is played by a typically unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård, as I could see less of the actor in the role that I could when he’s slathered up with grease paint as Pennywise The Dancing Clown.
An intriguing exercise in deconstructing myth and the nature of guilt and justice, The Death Of Robin Hood has a great many interesting things to say. However, while we start off brutal and gruesome, and then gradually slow-burn our way to a quieter, more introspective ending, there’s a sense that Sarnoski will lose those looking for a more traditional form of closure. For die-hard Robin afficionados, maybe stick to the Costner or Disney versions…
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