Robin Hood was an amiable communist who was a safe bet for ITV at quarter past five on a Saturday afternoon. In the eighties he was played by family-friendly Jason Connery; his catchy rhyme has been sung by children for decades:
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the Glen
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
Feared by the bad, loved by the good
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood
“The Death of Robin Hood” (Lyrical), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, dispenses with forests, horses, “robbing the rich to pay the poor,” and Robin’s clean-cut pre-watershed nature. “I have killed so many,” he says near the film’s end, his past floating up from the bottom of his mind. “I could not give you a count. Their brothers, their children, their grandchildren, they remember me. Now I must kill them. Again and again. It’s a curse.”
The film opens onto a bleak, treeless, snow-dusted landscape. “Do you have any food?” a freezing waif asks a man rubbing his hands by a fire. “I’m very hungry.” She has heard about Robin Hood: “He protects the meek.” Robin is incognito. “No one protects the meek,” he replies. “There is no great love for one such as him. He robbed and killed for the joy of it. Nothing more. He was not a hero. If you meet the villain, you should make haste away.” He stabs her in the carotid artery then handpicks rocks for her grave.
John, one of Robin’s merry men, had fancied another man’s wife; John “met [the other man] on the road ten summers ago,” and because “no one knew him” John murdered him, appropriated his name, “a good wife, and a good farm.” Roving up and down between massacres, Robin and Edward/John trade war stories. “When we met the potter,” Edward/John says, “did we leave him naked or did we kill him?” “Why would we leave him naked?” Robin says. “That never happened. It’s just a story you heard somewhere. We never met a potter. If we did we’d have killed him.”
Robin gouges or fells his many quarries; Edward/John first kills a man then punches him over and over. A child stumbles towards the camera; an arrow shot through the back of his skull protrudes an inch proud of his right eye. The sound design is thick and juicy: the thwack of a knife through the air, the ping of an axe blade on stone, the sizzle of fire, the hurtle of wagon wheels over uneven ground, the upsurging of blood, the grunting of gruff men at war. Hugh Jackman, as Robin, looks like a Klingon costumed for “The Revenant” (2015) (whose events took place in the Rocky Mountains; “Robin” is made in Northern Ireland, according to the end credits). As well as rats-tail, leonine wigs, there are prosthetic hands, pustular burns, a leper’s face, that child’s missing eye. The metronomic music double-times to keep up with all the violence.
Mist hovers. Stories—like dialog and plot—are flimsy and tricky and unreliable. “I have seen the power in stories,” Robin says. “They can be used to make men do terrible things. You can’t trust any of them.” Edward/John wants to start over but Robin is tired. “I do not aim to begin again,” he says, “I am for right death.”
Like the waif, Edward/John is a devout Christian. At his wife’s funeral, he crosses her hands over one another as if in prayer. He seethes and spits. “We cry to thee, O Lord. O king of heaven and everlasting Lord, receive the prayers we pour forth.” “And grant forgiveness.” “We have sinned and departed from thee. Wilt thou redeemer of all save us?” “And grant forgiveness,” etc.
The haze and darkness of the first third of the film clears. A hilltop, coastal priory provides a home for near-dead Robin. The sky above is like that of Montrose in June; a walled garden is laden with fruit trees and bisected by a brook. The prioress, played by Jodie Comer “will get you well again.” Edward/John says. “I’ve heard incredible stories.” A leper says that the prioress “were [once] like us: she knew great sorrow, great pain. But through that somehow she found the strength to heal us.” Robin’s combination therapy comprises bloodletting and physio; he hides as “Randolph.”
When Edward/John’s daughter turns up at the priory the audience isn’t sure whether she recognises Robin. Edward/John suffered a crisis of faith before he died. “Papa stopped praying,” the little girl says, “he was angry.” The prioress spots that Randolph is grieving. “Would you like me to pray for your friend?” she asks. “As you wish,” Robin replies. He isn’t a believer; at his centre is neither compassion nor love nor honesty. “Edward,” the prioress begins, “be not afraid. In the house of my father are many rooms … For where I am, you shall be also.” But when the little girl overhears “Little John,” more bloodlust is threatened. “That name is nonsense and you shall never speak it,” Robin says. “If you speak it, a cat will come in the night and take your tongue.”
Ms Comer captivates with her single-minded rendering of the big spiritual questions—forgiveness of sin; faith vs science—which suggest doubt. Her face shines at the guilty pleasures of thirteenth-century physics. Atoms are “the smallest invisible pieces that make up everything in creation. These atoms are sailing through the world.” The mist now alludes to the prioress’s swirling mind. As bloodletting signifies the body being drained of its sins, mist signifies the mind becoming distrustful of certain beliefs which rationalised a life both brutal and short.
The leper tells Robin a story about a philosopher. “An angel came to the philosopher,” he says, “and from her he learned that it doesn’t matter if … all you had was death. Because he had one thing that could never be taken. He had his mind. And in his mind was God.” “What happened to that great philosopher?” Robin asks. “He were tortured and executed of course,” the leper says. “Of course,” Robin replies.
Adam Poole
5th September 2026
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
