Synopsis: Grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, Robin Hood finds himself gravely injured after a battle he thought would be his last. In the hands of a mysterious woman, he is offered a chance at salvation.
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett, Faith Delaney, Noah Jupe
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Rated: R
Running Length: 123 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: Sarnoski’s Robin Hood is a brutal, frostbitten reimagining—a drop-dead gorgeous death march that survives a punishing first act but never fully earns the healing it’s chasing. Hugh Jackman (in full Logan mode) and Jodie Comer are excellent, though the film’s redemption arc gets buried under its own weight.
The Death of Robin Hood Review: Cold Hands, Heavy Sins
Survive the first thirty minutes of The Death of Robin Hood and you may find something worth admiring beneath all the mud, blood, regret, and medieval frostbite.
I use “survive” with intention.
Michael Sarnoski‘s bleak reimagining of the Robin Hood legend isn’t here to give anyone a merry band, a rousing archery contest, or a fox in a little feathered hat. This isn’t the outlaw hero stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. This Robin Hood is an old, brutalized, haunted man who has spent a lifetime turning violence into legend and legend into a shield. Now the shield is cracked, the body is failing, and the songs have fermented into accusations.
That’s a fascinating way into the material. It’s also a punishing one.
The Death of Robin Hood opens in a world where everything looks cold to the touch. The land feels emptied out. Men don’t duel so much as collapse into each other with weapons. Every movement seems to cost something. The film strips away the romance of the myth and replaces it with survival, guilt, and the awful sound of bodies hitting the earth.
Sarnoski can make a F-I-L-M. There’s no question about that. See Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One for examples. The question is whether this particular film can carry the full weight of everything he wants it to mean.
A Hero That Never Was
The press notes frame Sarnoski’s version as a raw, subversive look at Robin’s waning years, built around the idea that the heroic outlaw of legend may have been a myth constructed around a far more violent man. That is where the movie is strongest. It’s less interested in what Robin Hood did than in what stories allowed people to believe about him afterward.
Hugh Jackman plays Robin as a grizzled ruin, a man whose body has become a map of bad choices. The Merry Men are gone, or maybe the idea of them was always cleaner than the reality. What remains is a man carrying the cost of survival in a world that demanded brutality and then called it heroism when it suited the song. (Sounds a lot like Wolverine, right? Much of the film reminded me of Jackman’s best outing in the role, 2017’s Logan.)
Jackman (Song Sung Blue) commits completely. This isn’t a movie-star vanity transformation where a handsome actor adds dirt and calls it depth. He lets Robin feel ugly, frightened, cruel, exhausted, and occasionally reachable. There are moments where you can see the old charisma flicker through the wreckage, and those moments are important. The myth didn’t come from nowhere. This man could convince people to follow him. That might be his gift. It might also be his greatest sin.
The story pushes Robin toward one last reckoning after a battle leaves him gravely injured and placed in the care of Sister Brigid, played by Jodie Comer. In the old ballads, the prioress tied to Robin’s death has often been treated as the betrayer. Sarnoski flips that dynamic. Here, Brigid isn’t the villain waiting in a church bedroom. She’s a compassionate caregiver, a woman whose patience and moral steadiness force Robin to confront the version of himself he’s avoided for decades.
Jodie Comer Brings the Warmth, Sort Of
Comer (The Last Duel) is terrific, because of course she is. She’s become one of those performers who can do a lot with stillness. Brigid doesn’t need to announce her strength. She simply holds her ground.
The role could’ve become saintly, which is its own kind of trap. Comer avoids that by giving Brigid a practical, watchful intelligence. She’s kind, but not naive. She sees Robin’s pain without romanticizing it. She offers care without pretending care erases consequence. She also sports a wig that makes her look like an ancestor of Maria von Trapp.
Bill Skarsgård (as a haggard Little John) and Murray Bartlett (as a masked leper) are both startlingly buried in their roles, almost to the point of disbelief. Young Faith Delaney also avoids the usual child-actor tricks, giving the film a child who belongs in this broken world rather than a symbol wheeled in to soften the hero.
The Craft Is the Argument
If The Death of Robin Hood worked only as a technical exercise, it would still be worth discussing. This is a stunning production. Shot on 35mm by Pat Scola, the film has a texture that feels almost physical. The image has grain, weight, and weather. You don’t just watch the landscape. You feel the damp getting into your boots. Bring a blanket to the theater because you’ll feel a chill just looking at some of the scenery under the morning frost.
Production design by David Lee leans into roughness without turning every frame into medieval theme-park misery. The costumes by Lorna Marie Mugan look lived in, layered, and heavy. Jim Ghedi’s music avoids easy heroic cues, and Andrew Mondshein‘s editing gives the film room to breathe, sometimes too much room. Sarnoski knows how to make cinema that speaks to the senses.
The Shape of the Image
What the film never quite spells out is how much of its story is being carried visually. Scola’s cinematography isn’t just about texture—it’s about progression.
The early passages are flattened into cold grays and heavy shadow, images that feel as depleted as Jackman’s body. As Robin begins to recover, the frame softens almost imperceptibly, letting in a trace of warmth. It never fully settles. By the end, the cold returns, not as atmosphere but as a particular kind of eventuality.
That visual arc gives the film a clarity the narrative sometimes lacks. You can track where Robin is in his decline, even when the script starts to blur.
The landscapes reinforce that distance. The cliffs and open spaces never read as freedom, only exposure. The world is wide, but it offers nowhere to hide. We are not asked to live inside Robin so much as watch him from afar, like a figure already hardening into legend.
That may also explain the film’s emotional remove. For all its physical intimacy, The Death of Robin Hood is still a film you observe more than inhabit.
The Problem With Saying Everything
The film’s major weakness is focus. Sarnoski wants to examine violence, redemption, mythmaking, faith, guilt, mercy, and the stories people tell to survive their own histories. All worthy subjects. All rich subjects. Maybe too many subjects for one frost-covered Robin Hood death march.
But as the story lumbers toward its climax, the movie begins talking out of both sides of its mouth. It condemns violence while still needing the dramatic force of violence. It questions myth while building its own. It reaches for grace while circling punishment. Those contradictions could be fascinating if the film leaned into them with more precision. Instead, they sometimes make the final stretch feel muddled.
The climax also drags on far longer than necessary. That slackness matters because the film is already emotionally remote. There’s a thin line between austere and withholding, and Sarnoski crosses it often enough that the redemption arc never lands as powerfully as it should.
Admiration at Arm's Length
Still, I admire the swing. This is not content. This is not IP maintenance. This is a filmmaker taking a familiar legend and dragging it into the mud to see what bones remain.
The Death of Robin Hood is full of images I’ll remember longer than I’ll remember its narrative turns. Jackman’s weathered face against the gray landscape. Comer’s watchful silence in the priory. Skarsgård emerging from a burning home like a bad memory. The lonely sense that the world has already ended for these people, but nobody has had the decency to tell them.
Those are real achievements. But cinema can’t live on texture alone, at least not for me. I wanted to feel Robin’s redemption rather than study it second hand.
Should You Make the Pilgrimage?
The Death of Robin Hood is a technically stunning, fiercely acted, emotionally frigid reimagining of a familiar legend. Jackman gives the film a bruised and committed center, Comer supplies its compassion, and the craft work is often remarkable. But the film struggles to stay on message, especially in a drawn-out final stretch that muddies its own ideas about violence and redemption. I respect the artists involved. I respect the ambition. I just wish the movie had let a little warmth survive the winter.
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