Critic Reviews

This “Robin Hood” transitions into contemplative, philosophical registers while never slacking in suspense. It is, at its core, a redemption story, simple in persuasive ways yet richly complicated by difficult personalities and atrocious revelations. Coincidences that would seem narratively convenient in lesser narratives are imbued with a classical feeling of fate.

Sarnoski’s script doesn’t needlessly insert darkness into Robin Hood. It’s always been there, and his version of the outlaw is in communion with all those other retellings.

For once, a Robin Hood film has come along that challenges us to think about what redemption costs.

Not since Richard Lester’s underrated Robin and Marian has there been a more clear-eyed, metatextual investigation into the stories that comprise the legend.

[Sarnoski's] greatest accomplishment is crafting beautifully intimate portraits of these earnest subjects, set within aesthetically pleasing arenas that highlight impressive craft and alluring performances. It’s an inventive take on Robin Hood to strip away the merry men, nasty sheriffs, and pining love interests. This presentation is much more somber, yet in a way that conveys a far greater significance. It’s what turns what could have been a needless adaptation into a profound experience.

Bold, brutal yet surprisingly sensitive, it’s about as far away from Errol Flynn’s Technicolor tights or Kevin Costner’s mullet as you can imagine.

[Michael Sarnoski's] latest isn’t deep enough or captivating enough to make the same impact as his previous movies, but it’s a mature work that makes a valid point, and Hugh Jackman gives an excellent lead performance.

The Death of Robin Hood isn’t revisionist history — it’s a history of revisionism. One that fittingly creeps further into fiction with every claim it makes towards “the truth,” as Sarnoski’s ultra-austere effort to cut through a millennium of myths can’t help but create a hard-to-swallow fable of its own along the way.

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.

The brooding pace and relative silence that characterize writer-director Michael Sarnoski’s The Death of Robin Hood is more evocative of his standout debut film Pig than it is his far more mainstream A Quiet Place: Day One, making this elegiac but brutal period piece his most niche and least accessible film yet. Still, its heady mix of mournful drama and murderous action certainly distinguish it from the litany of other Robin Hood films in existence.