★★★★ - TIME OUT
- Hugh Jackman is terrific in a dark but powerful new take on the old outlaw -
You might feel your done with Robin Hood – takes from the rich, gives to the poor, yadda yadda yadda – but Michael Sarnoski’s film finds new textures and humanity in the stock figure. The ‘death’ of the title refers to the demise of the legend, peeling the narrative and folklore from the so-called hero to reveal the fragile, troubled man beneath the myth. Bold, brutal yet surprisingly sensitive, it’s about as far away from Errol Flynn’s Technicolor tights or Kevin Costner’s mullet as you can imagine.
Beginning in 1247 A.D. (the onscreen date roots it in reality) in the rugged, miserable landscapes of the Celtic Fringe, Sarnoski’s rich film is divided into two diametrically opposed halves. We meet Robin (Jackman) sporting a big coat and a bigger beard, barely existing on a mountainside, roasting rabbits on an open fire and brutally murdering a vengeance-seeking assailant – it doesn’t matter that she is a young girl.
Robin is found by former cohort Little John (an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård) whom he hasn’t seen for 15 years. Now with a wife, child and a new identity as ‘Edward’ – everyone in this world has fake names to hide their murky pasts – John recruits Robin to help him fend off some killers hell-bent on retribution for previous misdemeanours.
Working in a similar downbeat register to his previous films Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, Sarnoski and long-time cinematographer Pat Scola paint a portrait of a grim world. The palette is cold and grey until the night-time fight sequences, where the burning houses burn in a halloween orange strangely reminiscent of Apocalypse Now. The combat feels unchoreographed, sloppy and vicious. Throats are slit. Stakes are plunged into chests. This is not for the faint-hearted, underlined by the brooding folk of singer-songwriter Jim Ghedi.
The second half of the film is a gentler, though no less compelling affair as a wounded Robin – labouring under the guise of ‘Randolph’ – ends up in a remote abbey under the compassionate care of Sister Brigid (the ever-excellent Jodie Comer). He gradually forms a friendship with a leper (The White Lotus’s Murray Bartlett) and helps to take care of a non-verbal child (Faith Delaney) who joins the priory.
‘It’s never too late to find peace,’ says the leper and Jackman’s performance, one of the best of his career, perfectly etches a man reckoning with his evil deeds and imagining a different way of being. The accent police may be all over Jackman’s wandering intonation but it doesn’t matter. He convinces in every frame.
The visuals here are much more pastoral – there are beautiful tracking shots through an orchard – and Sarnoski plays with aspect ratios to make the world more open and accessible. When Noah Jupe’s Arthur turns up at the priory looking for revenge, it feels like this will turn into ye olde Unforgiven with Robin/Randolph pulled back into his violent ways to protect the priory, but Sarnoski is smarter than that. He still has twists and turns that keep you guessing. The result is a Robin Hood for right now: complex, conflicted and morally ambiguous.
- Ian Freer, TIME OUT
The Death of RObin Hood is now playing at Light House Cinema!