They called him Robin Hood: violence and contemplation (critique)

Hugh Jackman plays an aging Robin Hood haunted by his crimes in this reflection on the power of stories.

The original title is much more straightforward: The Death of Robin Hood. The Death of Robin Hood. Michael Sarnoski (Pig, Quietly: Day 1) here portrays a prince of thieves who, in the twilight of his life, intends to reestablish the truth: no, he was not a merry bandit in tights who robbed the rich to give to the poor, but a bloodthirsty thug who told stories about him so that gullible guys would follow him “into the darkness”. Sean Connery had already played Locksley’s graying Robin in 1976, but in a more romantic and melancholic mode, in The Rose and the Arrow by Richard Lester – a film which was almost called The Death of Robin Hood…

It is therefore Hugh Jackman who succeeds him today, and the actor (who had already superbly played a Wolverine at the end of his race in Logan) is magnificent as a exhausted brute. We are first struck by the violence of the film, uninhibited, bordering on nag. Before the story makes an astonishing change of regime halfway through, when Robin finds refuge within a religious community led by Jodie Comer, a sort of purgatory where he will meditate on the power of myths and stories through philosophical-bucolic conversations. Michael Sarnoski demonstrates here the same qualities and the same limits as in his Pig with Nicolas Cage as a truffle-hunting hermit: ability to sublimate a star by ridding him of his tics and trappings, desire to torpedo the promises of action and castagne with a very pronounced taste (sometimes too much) for contemplation. Between intellectual stasis and encore pranks, the film remains in any case an original proposition, which speaks intelligently of our collective addiction to stories too good to be true.

By Michael Sarnoski. With Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgard…. Duration: 2h02. Released July 1, 2026