They say legends never die, but that is true only in storybooks and fables. It is 1247, and after a life of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, Robin (Hugh Jackman) finds himself with fewer and fewer allies across England as the crown has executed most of his roving band over the years. Little John (Bill Skarsgård), one of Robin’s remaining compatriots, asks the archer for his help in reclaiming the farm which he works and his family, who have been held hostage by the landowner. In the battle, Robin suffers a grave injury and is delivered to the Priory of St. Clement, a remote island overseen by Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), who nurses the man back to health.

Michael Sarnoski writes and directs The Death of Robin Hood for A24, based on the 17th-century ballad “Robin Hood’s Death.” The 122-minute film debuted at the Sydney Film Festival and then a week later graced 1,700 domestic screens. With a budget somewhere in the middle of Sarnoski’s previous efforts, Pig (2021) and A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), Robin Hood is at home in the burgeoning auteur’s filmography in both its tone and its themes; an interesting feat as the director is still forming his own cohort of creatives, with only cinematographer Pat Scola returning for this third outing and editor Andrew Mondshein here for a second time under Sarnoski’s direction.

The film opens under a starlit sky as we follow a young wainwright (Jade Croot) who has happened upon Robin’s encampment. They share a small meal, but in the middle of the night, her plot to kill Robin is foiled, and the grizzled marksman shows his would-be assailant no mercy. It sets the tone for the film to follow that this is not the light and airy Robin Hood we know; a tone and a visual palette that will only grow darker and more oppressive across the first act of the film to the point of growing dangerously close to turning its audience away. Costumer Lorna Ó Ríordáin bypasses the forest greens, opting instead for the muddier shades of earth tones, and while composer Jim Ghedi does incorporate a medieval quality to his score along with multiple instances of friarly chanting, there are many elements of modern horror musical tropes that give this specific score the feeling that it itself is being hunted and led towards its own downfall. There is a recurring theme of discordant metal scraping, not in the same timbre as the clashing of swords and armor, but as if the specter of an early industrialized world is stalking the few remaining bastions of the world of the film. Notably, Saronoski is using this purely to create emotional dread in the audience and is not positing that Robin Hood’s world is somehow idealized in its simplicity, nor is he trying to graft onto the film any real modern reading beyond the core characterization of Robin Hood as a folk hero, but even that role is more mired than in many other renditions of the leader of the Merry Men.

In the title role, Jackman finds himself in another role of a hero faced with his own morality; first a sendoff of Wolverine in James Mangold‘s Logan (2017) and now here, as Robin Hood. While the parallels between the two on a surface level cannot be ignored, Jackman is hardly pulling from the same well, crafting instead a brand-new character for himself instead of delivering a eulogy to a character he embodied for seventeen years. Jackman plays the character with a rugged gravitas, giving the character an air befitting this version of feudal England, but one that, at least for the opening act, leaves audiences cold. The character warms up as he spends time on the Priory, growing closer to Sister Brigid, who oversees the operation, and making himself useful to increase the quality of life for the wards on her island. His presence is in stark contrast to everything about this island, not only in the rough hew of his burlap, even though the lighter colors worn by the other patients seem equally uncomfortable, but as the film unfolds, the true narrative transformation is not so much bold action by Robin, but rather the softening of his demeanor as he learns to let down his guard after years on the run. Jackman layers the performance carefully, composing and then traveling up and down the gradient of emotions he allows Robin to experience. Without seventeen years of cinematic memories, and maybe only a passing understanding of the Robin Hood legends, he presents to audiences this new version of a man with a history as deep and as long as the scars which cover his body.

As for the narrative, it slowly blossoms and plays out as an extension of the cold open with the Wainwrights; the “tax man” has come to collect on his debts and, to borrow a modern phrase, the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. On the island and acting as Sister Brigid’s right-hand man is a leper (Murray Bartlett) who, faced with the end of his own life, takes Robin under his wing to ensure the continued prosperity of the Priory after his passing. Additionally, working to help Robin make his penance before meeting Peter at the Gates is young Margaret (Faith Delaney), a traumatized orphan delivered to the care of the Priory after the murder of her own family. The girl represents much of what Robin had left behind on the mainland; she is the daughter of Little John – though too young to recognize him – and in a way, their opening scenes together are reminiscent of the Wainwright, though in this case he is the one who is pursuing her through the woods. Lastly, there is the arrival of Goodwyn (Noah Jupe), a young man whom Robin shot with an arrow through the eye in the melee at Little John’s farm and was allowed to live so that he could be sent as a message to the landlord’s family. He, however, is old enough to know the man who stole his eye, and later, we learn, in the leper’s dying breath, that Robin has been the cause of much of the suffering endured by the island community, most notably having slain Sister Brigid’s own father in front of her as a girl. For audiences not on board with the story that Sarnoski is trying to tell, these reveals will play out with all the overdramatic convinces of a soap opera, but when the story is filtered through the idea that this island is a purgatory for which Robin must face and attest to the pain which he has caused across his lifetime of thievery, it becomes a powerful and cathartic crucible. To be disingenuous to the film, this very idea seems antithetical to the entire idea of Robin Hood as a character, but read as a drama of an outsized man faced with his own mortality, the continued convergence of these ghosts from Robin’s past on this idyllic island – surrounded by crystalline blue baptismal waters and the nubile greens of springtime – is incredibly impactful.

Almost a revisionist fairy tale with all the overwrought baggage that comes with that, The Death of Robin Hood lands harder than its opening act implies. Sarnoski is in his element dealing with themes of isolationism as well as following characters with deep roots in a rapidly changing world. Like tapping into an artery for a bleeding, the film taps into inherent human fear of how we leave the world. The pages could have certainly taken a more explicit approach as they examined the human condition, albeit an examination already pored over by an author whose name, ironically enough, has been lost to time. Shining most in its production design, led by David Lee, that carves out environments fitting of idols and cathedrals of the time as if each frame was harvested from the heavy-hewn old growth Major Oaks from Sherwood Forest itself, The Death of Robin Hood requires patience and reflection, but in these moments of silence and prayer, it reveals itself to its audience a stunning and overwhelming display. We are presented, along with Robin, carefully personified through Jackman, with our own fleeting time here on Earth and among those that we love, and we realize that our actions, committed in a single moment, reverberate and echo throughout our lives, shaping the world we live in. This is not a thrilling action film, though it boasts some brutal battle scenes. This is not a searing drama, though it has the sharply honed edge of one. In its purest form, it is the tragedy of man, painted with the bold, broad strokes of a hero so that the humanity of the text can be felt and understood by the widest audience; a testament not only to Sarnoski’s storytelling, but to that of the unknown writer generations ago, too.