There are no merry men to be found in “The Death of Robin Hood,” an elegiac portrait of the famed folk hero that eventually delivers on its title, but not before an extended bout of myth-busting and moral reckoning. Following a dip into studio franchise waters with “A Quiet Place: Day One” two years ago, the third feature from writer-director Michael Sarnoski sees him returning to the intimate scope and melancholic timbre of his debut “Pig” — this despite story material far more accustomed to blockbuster treatment on screen. Starring a Gandalf-coiffed Hugh Jackman as a battle-worn Robin Hood weary of his heroic reputation, Sarnoski’s revisionist interpretation dares to suggest that his life of crime wasn’t in fact charitably motivated; his quest here is an interior one, to salvage his soul from the lie he’s been living.
The result is pensive, sensitive and bracingly low on derring-do, though it’s also a little one-note. Sarnoski deromanticizes the legend with keen attention to historic and atmospheric detail, and a studious interest in how stories are told and retold through time. But the sad smallness (or small sadness) of the story it settles on instead is both the point of the exercise and a slow, steady downer from the get-go. Beautifully shot and designed in a full rainbow of earth and stone and sackcloth, and performed with grace and conviction by Jackman and a well-chosen ensemble — including Jodie Comer as a stoic abbess nursing our man, if not to health, at least to peace — this is a production of unimpeachable integrity and intelligence, and a commendably mature bit of summer counter-programming from distributor A24. But it almost wears its dourness as a badge of honor.
“The Death of Robin Hood” is actually the second film to take as its inspiration an alternate narrative from the ancient ballad “A Gest of Robyn Hode,” which concluded with the aging hero in the care of a murderous prioress, finally meeting his maker at her hands. Richard Lester’s 1976 “Robin and Marian” redesigned the story as a bittersweet autumn-years love story, conflating the roles of the prioress and Maid Marian. Sarnoski’s version likewise recasts the female character as a benevolent force, and is largely stripped of romance — though permits itself a streak of sentimentality in a subplot concerning the grizzled outlaw’s gentle bond with a young girl.
The predominantly stern tone of proceedings is established, however, by an opening sequence that introduces Robin as a lone-wolf nomad, living off what little the land has to offer after years of war and pillaging, and briefly sharing fire and food with a young female drifter (Jade Croot, from last year’s “Rabbit Trap”) before stabbing her in the head. The year is 1247, seemingly empty word of his heroic goodness has long passed into local lore, and all the “wrecked and wanton” killer now wants is “a right death.” Before that can happen, however, he’s roped into one final skirmish: He’s unexpectedly visited by Little John (Bill Skarsgård), once one of his underage criminal accomplices, and asked to help defend the younger man’s family and homestead from vengeful past foes.
The conflict that ensues is startling in the intensity of its violence, as bodies brawl and break in the mud, flaming torches are taken to the face, and red-hot blades are seared into flesh. Sarnoski initially seems to be pursuing a kind of fever-dream hellishness akin to the battle scenes of Robert Eggers’ “The Northman,” though bloodthirsty thrill-seekers would be advised to load up on the film’s first half-hour: There’s a marked shift in mood, rhythm and volume once Robin, left brutally wounded and unconscious in the clash, wakes up in the serene priory overseen by Sister Brigid (Comer), who has opened its doors to all left alone and unsheltered in this ongoing climate of terror.
Among his fellow residents are a masked, unnamed leper (Murray Bartlett), whose sanguine acceptance of his misfortune sets the tone for Robin’s own spiritual self-confrontation; Arthur (Noah Jupe), grievously injured in the same battle, and reluctantly tasked with revenge on the shattered outlaw; and Margaret (delicate newcomer Faith Delaney), newly orphaned daughter of Little John, who attaches herself to him with vulnerable need. What ensues is a quiet, pained series of conciliatory encounters between these variously damaged individuals, each chasing some manner of healing and redemption — and in Robin’s case, a last-ditch narrowing of the chasm between the man he is and the man others believe him to be.
It’s an ambitiously internal narrative arc, traced more through conversation and observation than overt incident, and Sarnoski’s script is loath to force undue tension between its characters, while Robin and Brigid’s bond is left nobly platonic. But it’s only an intermittently compelling tale, given the consistent tenor of Robin’s jaded self-loathing and the portentous inevitability of his fate. The dissonance between the human husk presented here and the dashing, green-clad adventurer of old is striking, but despite the haunted solemnity of Jackman’s performance, the character remains slender and unknowable — and our interest in the rightness or otherwise of his death is more theoretical than deeply felt.
Still, after his proficient but compromised-feeling “Quiet Place” prequel, where you could sense the friction between the director’s humanity and the grind of genre machinery, Sarnoski’s latest is an altogether more confident statement of intent, interests and identity, from the richly overcast 35mm textures of Pat Scola’s cinematography to the sometimes lilting formality of the dialogue. “The Death of Robin Hood” holds our attention for the sheer severity of its reinvention, the rooted, hessian-rough vividness of its ruined world, and its earnest, complex preoccupation with matters of the soul — a vanishingly rare virtue in the multiplex in general, let alone in the realm of endlessly repurposed IP.
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