This may seem like a very obscure reference, but I couldn’t help thinking of one particular line from Chicken Run while watching The Death of Robin Hood. After fainting when getting measured to be put in a pie, Babs (voice of Jane Horrocks), one of the chickens with a distinct northern English accent says, “Me whole life flashed before me eyes! It was really boring.” That is the effect Death of Robin Hood had on me, and which I expect it will have on audiences. I do not know what the intended effect was, but director Michael Sarnoski — who has really never steered moviegoers wrong before, his first two films being Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One — really whiffed in his third outing.
Pig (2021) remains one of the very best films of the 21st century so far, in my view. Its focused, languid pace never gets dull, and crucially never distracts from its themes about the art of cooking and art in general. How Sarnoski could go from that incredible debut to this dreck is beyond me. It shares Pig’s stillness, but, love it or hate it, at least things happened in Pig! Death starts out as intensely violent as it could possibly be, only to almost immediately take us to a complete nothing-burger of a story, told without consideration for any kind of general audience. Sometimes that kind of boldness from a director can be a good thing; my beloved Mother Mary is a testament to the fact that not everything has to be for everybody. But again, things happened in that movie. The Death of Robin Hood is literally nothing for nobody.
Hugh Jackman stars as an aging Robin Hood, reeling from the repercussions of a violent and truly brutal past. Based on one of the medieval ballads of Robin Hood, Sarnoski’s re-imagining of the legend is nothing like the happy-go-lucky Disney version, nor is it even like any other recent film version I can recall. Instead, Robin is shown to be a true villain, bordering on psychopathy. Little John (Bill Skarsgård) is even worse, as he has essentially hijacked a family by posing as their dead patriarch. Then, when the extended family gets wise to this insanity, they rightfully storm the home, but also intentionally kill his “wife” in the process? I include the question mark because I’m genuinely confused as to the reasoning behind any of this. Of course, it’s no crime to show how brutal life could really be in the 1200s, but this is just misery porn run amok. For some reason, Robin takes it upon himself to tie up loose ends for his estranged, insane friend, and a couple of loose ends follow Robin to the priory at which he intends to end his life.
At the priory, he meets caretaker Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), who weirdly takes a liking to Robin, who hides his true identity by calling himself “Randolph.” She helps him physically recover from a critical injury while he helps as much as he can with projects around the grounds. Outside of one particularly nasty conversation with Godwyn (Noah Jupe), one of the loose ends from earlier, that’s literally the last 75% of the film. Nothing is learned, apart from Robin teaching archery to little Margaret (Faith Delaney). Both Robin and Brigid are shown to be dealing with existential crises, but the film refuses to give us too many details or really any emotional connective tissue regarding these. What we are left with is a half-hearted redemption arc for a serial killer.
I would criticize the film more for how mean and nasty it can be, but at the end of the day, it’s simply too boring to get but so upset about. What does upset me is the waning potential of Michael Sarnoski. The film looks good enough and has an impressive soundtrack by Sheffield folk singer Jim Ghedi, but Sarnoski’s better technical angels can’t save the all-too-devilish, dour nature of this pretentious mess. | George Napper
