It’s 1247 England, and a young girl is freezing to death. Trudging through a blinding blizzard, she spots a campfire flickering in the distance. She cautiously approaches the man (Hugh Jackman) at the campfire, who throws her a piece of meat and lets her join him beside the fire. She asks him what he knows of the hero Robin Hood, but he only dismisses the legends of the poor man’s champion as tall tales. “He was a murderous brigand,” he says roughly, which seems to spark a reaction in the young girl. Later that night, the girl creeps up on the man’s sleeping figure with a dagger, but the man jumps to defend himself, fatally stabbing her before gently admonishing her for her mistakes. For he is Robin Hood, and the girl is the latest in a long line of vengeful people looking to repay his blood debts. The Death of Robin Hood, Michael Sarnoski’s brutally beautiful and meditative new thriller, is a curious new release. For one, its cold, wintry setting seems ill-suited for the summer blockbuster season it’s uneasily entering, and for another, it seems the kind of edgy take on a folkloric hero that fell out of favor 10 years ago. But it’s thanks to Sarnoski, who has a talent for turning genre films like the revenge thriller Pig and the alien-invasion flick A Quiet Place: Day One into introspective character dramas, that The Death of Robin Hood thoughtfully transcends its gritty conceit of “what if Robin Hood was a bad dude.” |
