The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C
I saw the trailer for The Death of Robin Hood several months ago and I made a mental note of it because I thought it looked pretty cool. However, I also assumed that this movie actually had something to do with Robin Hood. It doesn’t. This is an incredibly bleak and ridiculously violent movie that makes Robin Hood out to be nothing but a psychotic killer.
Very, very loosely based on the story Robin Hood’s Death from the 17th century, The Death of Robin Hood starts with Robin stabbing a girl in the side of the head. After that inspiring prologue, Robin and Little John go to save (?) Little John’s wife and child, whose home has been taken over by criminals. Robin and Joh kill the shit out of these guys and I mean they kill the fucking shit out of these guys. John beats a man nearly to death and then literally rips his jaw off. Robin takes a flaming torch and stabs it though a man’s face while he begs or mercy. Oh, then a 10-year-old boy runs away from the scene of this violence. Robin picks up his bow and shoots this little fucker through the back of the head and the arrow comes out of his eye. It was at this point that my brain flashed to Graham Chapman in Monty Python and the Holy Grail screaming “Jesus Christ!” when the bunny rabbit killed a man.
Robin gets injured and the rest of the film is about him healing at a place run by a nun played by Jodie Comer. I think that the movie is going for something akin to Unforgiven because the rest of the movie is about Robin reflecting on his life and what a monster he was. But there are a couple of problems with that comparison. First, Unforgiven has a much more developed redemption plot and a much deeper story. Second, this is supposed to be about Robin fucking Hood. Political implications aside, Robin Hood is supposed to be virtuous. You can certainly be more ambiguous about this, but he isn’t supposed to be a monster. He isn’t supposed to shoot children in the head with arrows. He certainly isn’t supposed to burn children alive.
That being said, this would have been a better movie if it hadn’t tied itself to the Robin Hood legend. And, keep in mind, the only classic characters are Robin and Little John. There is no Friar Tuck or the other Merry Men. There is no Marianne. There is no Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin and Little John are here, but in name only. They are vicious killers with no redeemable qualities about them. Unlike Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, they shouldn’t need such redemption in the first place and Robin never even achieves real redemption. These are just horrific, terrible people. This is like Natural Born Killers of Nottingham. Except Nottingham isn’t in it.
The film is very well made, though. It is beautifully shot, often reminding me of a less fantastical version of The Northman, and both Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer are fantastic. The issue with Robin Hood is not Hugh Jackman’s performance, who is channeling similar vibes to Logan. The problem is not his performance, but that his character is far more terrible than the filmmakers seem to realize. Bill Skarsgård as Little John is a bit more of a mixed bag. He is giving his all, but I also had a hard time following the first act of the movie because I had a hard time understanding what he was saying.
If this wasn’t called Robin Hood, I might have had a better time with it. It is a well-made movie with strong performances. But, holy fucking hell, this is not Robin Hood. These characters are despicable, the film is shockingly violent and the whole thing just feels gross. If it was called The Death of the Outlaw and had no ties to popular culture, then maybe I could have gotten behind it more. Even if they wanted to do an Unforgiven or Logan style story with Robin Hood, that could work if you didn’t turn Robin into an irredeemable psychopath. As it is, this film is a well-made mess.
Image by:
By A24 – http://www.impawards.com/2026/death_of_robin_hood.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82038017
