Review: "The Death of Robin Hood"

The Death of Robin Hood offers a radically different take on an age-old legend.  In the opening scenes, an aged, weathered, white-haired Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman) confesses he’s killed more people than he can count, including men, women and children and that the heroic stories of his adventures are all lies.

You know he’s serious when he brutally murders a character in the opening reel, introducing us to a cold, stark, wintry world of the year 1247.  Robin isn’t so much a hero as survivalist.  He’s an anti-hero, much like Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” character in the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns.

His only remaining friend is Little John (Bill Skarsgård), who chooses to go by the name Edward.  When Edward’s home is attacked and his wife is murdered, Robin and Edward wage a bloody war of revenge in which Robin receives life-threatening wounds.  To save his friend’s life, Edward takes him to a remote island where a young woman, Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), is able to restore him back to health.

It’s an island inhabited by the Sister, a small group of children and a remarkably functional, philosophical leper (Murray Bartlet) wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. As Robin recuperates, he reflects on his life of murder and crime and realizes that this might be his opportunity for spiritual salvation.

If the story sounds deep and depressing, it is.  It’s Shakespearean in its approach. The visuals, though shadowy and somber, are beautifully rendered, resembling paintings by Rembrandt.  The Death of Robin Hood pushes hard in terms of both content and style.

It’s a movie that wants to turn the legend of Robin Hood upside down and inside out.  Film scholars talk about the evolution of movie genres.  In the case of Robin Hood, the primitive phase would be the 1922 silent version starring Douglas Fairbanks.  The classic version would be The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) starring Errol Flynn.  The parody version would be Robin Hood: Men in Tights (Mel Brooks, 1993).  Finally, the revisionist version (though not the only one) would be writer/director Michael Sarnoski’s The Death of Robin Hood, which trashes all that went before in an attempt to radically redefine the characters and story.

The Death of Robin Hood does that, though it’s not the first movie to deal with Robin Hood’s death.  Recall Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian (1976) starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, in which Marian poisons Robin in the final reel.  It was a shocking story twist, but Robin in that movie was still the folk hero who redistributed the wealth and saved the kingdom from tyranny.

Hugh Jackman’s Robin Hood doesn’t offer much to like or admire, aside from his rugged good looks and those waves of shimmering silver hair.  He’s a killer with no moral compass in a cruel, gruesome world.

The movie abounds in violence and graphic gore.  There are weapon inflected wounds and the repulsive medieval medical technique of bloodletting, shown repeatedly.  Some of the violence spills over into pure surrealism, like when a character shot through the back of the head (with the point of the arrow protruding from his eye socket) manages to somehow survive and walk home.  It’s beyond ridiculous.

The Death of Robin Hood isn’t for everyone.  It’s a pretty brutal, dialog heavy time trip to a place where none of us would ever want to live.  Being on a small island with a leper, is just one example.  No one in the movie seems concerned about the terrifying contagiousness of leprosy.  It’s just a cool plot element in Michael Sarnoski’s bizarre alternate reality.

Admittedly, the art direction and cinematography are enough to keep the audience connected if they are willing to suspend disbelief, stomach the sight of rabbits being trapped and skinned, and ignore all the things that just don’t add up in the end.

It leads you to the conclusion that perhaps some legendary stories are best left alone. 

Arguably, we need heroes who are heroes and represent the best in us.  It could be the reason that Michael Curtiz’s classic The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is still exciting and entertaining, all these years later.