3.5 stars (out of 4)
Starring Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård, Katie Breen, and Faith Delaney
Language: English
Running time: 123 minutes
Available: In theaters, June 19, 2026
Let me have length and breadth enough,
With a green sod under my head;
That they may say, when I am dead
Here lies bold Robin Hood.
--“The Death of Robin Hood,” traditional ballad
Hugh Jackman may strike certain cinephiles as a dramatic lightweight, a one-time pretty boy/hack actor who made his mark as a Broadway singer and stage eye candy. Not exactly a serious actor. If you’re one of them…
Throw it all out the window.
Jackman has shown his dramatic depth in the psychological fantasy The Prestige (2006), the crime thriller Prisoners (2013), and the political drama The Front Runner (2018). He has two Tony awards, a Grammy, and an Academy Award nomination. Don’t let his ongoing work as the anti-hero Wolverine throw you off the scent. The man is a serious talent, and he uses his considerable skills to maximum effect in the new film from director Michael Sarnoski, The Death of Robin Hood.
Jackman, Sarnoski, and cinematographer Pat Scola have crafted a film that is at once serious, deep, and existential, filmed with such artistry that you’ll want the frames to freeze and let the scene-setting shots melt into your mind.
Not to get ahead of my skis, but the themes of this laudable movie are remorse, redemption, and release, more or less in that order. I’m not tipping my hand, because the title says it all: Robin Hood dies. A summer laugh-fest, this ain’t.
For those who don’t fully recall the 15th-century legend, an English farmer called Robin Hood rebels against the misrule of evil King John, who has taken the crown while the rightful ruler, Richard the Lionheart, is away at the Crusades. Robin Hood is known far and wide as “the man who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.” He wears clothes of kelly green as he and his Merry Men roam about Sherwood Forest, feasting on venison and menacing the Sheriff of Nottingham’s lackeys. The perfect folk hero.
Except, as Jackman says time and again, he’s not a hero.
Fast forward 50 years. The once young and rebellious people’s hero of Nottingham has become a tyrant of the woods. He mercilessly avenges the death of his friends. He’s slaughtered hundreds of people, including dozens of children. He’ll eliminate anyone, even their offspring who might come back and kill him for revenge. He is a thief, an unrepentant killer, an inveterate blood-luster.
Those who have achieved a modicum of success in their careers will tell you in private that they have not been perfect, that they have cut corners, unveiled secrets, cut an opponent off at the knees unfairly, or done all these things and more.
And thus enters Robin Hood. And he’s tired.
A chance encounter brings him back in contact with Little John (Bill Skarsgård), the behemoth with whom Robin began his cotillion of cutthroats years earlier. John, now known as Edward, requests Robin’s help. Desperate in-laws are trying to take his farm from him, his wife, and child. Robin, as he must, agrees to take up the fight. In the fiery aftermath, Robin is nearly killed, and taken to an island priory where the selfless Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer) nurses him back to health.
The revelations that follow, including Robin’s confession that he is the bloodthirsty killer Robin Hood, set in motion the finale, in which the forest-dwelling icon meets his ultimate fate.
The visual mood at the beginning is so dark that the audience sometimes has to squint to see what’s on the screen. But the photography is gorgeous, nonetheless, at times even stunning: mist wafting on the moors, cumulonimbus clouds racing over mountaintops, low fog spreading across the glens. The setting is grim, gray, stark, and undeniably thrilling.
Unsettling revelations are the clockwork that moves The Death of Robin Hood forward. His confession to Sister Brigid, the identity of the mysterious leper, the announcement that he is ready to die—there’s hardly a moment when the audience can simply sit back and watch. A bombshell waits around every corner.
The movie seems to call for pronouncements on What It All Means. Does our past catch up with us? Does the good we do outweigh the bad? Is the world a terrible place, and nothing matters?
Director Sarnoski calls for intense, abject violence in the first half of the film, then leads us to a gentler place, but one where reminiscence is a brutal punishment, self-awareness a painful fate. Sarnoski’s pacing may be heavy-handed—the darkness of evil followed by the light of reparation—but it’s the right fit for this story.
The Death of Robin Hood is made for an audience ready to grapple with its philosophical twists. Not a kids’ movie. Not a romance. It’s an honest-to-goodness examination of a man’s life. Big-budget movies with bankable stars rarely tread into such sophisticated, serious territory. This one does. And it deserves your attention.
Author Bio:
Mark Orwoll writes about film, travel, food and drink for Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine