He was a dick. Get over it. There, I’ve just saved you the pain of watching this nearly endless unpleasantness. Writer/director Michael Sarnoski cracked a history book or two and sought to deliver a unique take: Robin Hood was a murderous asshole. Unfortunately, he put this message in film form, where it took two grueling hours to watch this jerk die in exchange for a weak and unsatisfying redemption.
Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman, barely recognizable here in a long beard and old-man makeup) is hanging out by a fire in the bitter cold of 1247 England. Confessing to us that he’s a man who only robbed and killed for pleasure, nothing more, we are left wondering why this old coot hasn’t at least got a cave for shelter. As if to answer, Robin proceeds to kill a 12-year-old girl who wants revenge for her family. This tiresome film could have ended right there, but Robin Hood smelled her downwind as she approached. If only. *sigh*
Then Little John (Bill Skarsgård, also unrecognizable) shows up, looking to re-steal the farm and wife he stole fair-and-square, and we the audience are handed the pleasure of watching our hero kill relatively innocent people in cold blood, and a few others in hot blood. Again, justice and a better movie could have been served if Robin just died right here. He did not.
The wounded Robin is delivered to a priory on an island that gets few visitors, and
this is where his redemption and death can finally take place, but believe me, the film is in no hurry to get to either.
My general impression of The Death of Robin Hood is that Michael Samoski has a bone to pick. He needs history to set the record straight on Robin Hood by making the dullest, angriest, and most poorly shot Robin Hood of all time. Oh yeah, Kevin Costner as Robin Hood was practically a cartoon, but do you really want the version where Hugh Jackman does a bunch of amoral crap and then laments for 90 minutes about having done amoral crap? And all in a fake beard and cinematography equally as unpleasant as the screenplay. This film is slow, clunky, and confusing. If we’re not supposed to like Robin, why give him a redemptive arc? If we are supposed to like Robin, why show us him killing a child? This feels like a blindingly slow apology from every Hood film that came before it … and while The Death of Robin Hood might just be closest to the actual truth, I wish I were watching any one of the lies instead.
There was once an outlaw Robin Hood
Mythology decided this man was good
History has a say
It may yet get its way
But it can’t entertain you like it should
Rated R, 123 Minutes
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Writer: Michael Sarnoski
Genre: Rewriting mythology
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Descendents of the Hood’s victims, maybe?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “This isn’t even a little fun.”
