Entertainment
Review: Dour and dull, ‘The Death of Robin Hood’ steals our time to give to the gloom
Over eons of mythmaking, the 13th century bandit Robin Hood has evolved from a scamp adored by King Henry VIII to a symbol of sticking it to the rich. He’s been called a thief, a benefactor, a commoner, a lord, a killer and a hero. During the Great Depression, Robin was a dashing champion of the people. At the height of the Red Scare, he was a Communist threat; then, in the ‘70s, a sexy cartoon fox. But never until Michael Sarnoski’s “The Death of Robin Hood,” which imagines the folk legend as a benumbed mass murderer, has this outlaw been duller than the rock piles he builds to bury his corpses.
Hugh Jackman plays Robin Hood in his final days, a loose retelling of a 500-year-old ballad, and seems to have ancient dirt creased into his wrinkles. Injuries and exhaustion have him aching to retire. Yet the family members of his casualties won’t let him quit. Out of duty to their bloodlines, these vengeful mourners — even the grandchildren of his victims — continue attempting to assassinate him even though he doesn’t remember, or care about, their beloved dead. Robin is enduring a nightmare version of a party at which every unfamiliar face huffily claims they’ve met you before. It’s relatable, except for the throat-slitting.
This savage, amoral and unfeeling Robin Hood has been written to invert everything modern fans like about him. He doesn’t wear green. He doesn’t sport a feather. He’s never loved a Maid Marian. He doesn’t even romp around a forest with a pack of merry men. Instead, he starts the film on a barren mountaintop, alone. (Similarly, Jim Ghedi’s transporting score has the sound of traditional ballads like “Silver Dagger” splintering apart mid-verse to reassemble as funeral hymns.)
From his gray hair to limping stride, Jackson’s Robin is so battered by decades of violence and outdoor camping that, at first glance, I thought his bare feet were a pair of alligator boots. Filmed in Northern Ireland, the landscapes are cold, green and formidable (if muted by too much mist). The first shot has a miserable grandeur: a frigid landscape, frozen berries and wind so strong it nearly blows a starving traveler sideways. Shortly after, cinematographer Pat Scola’s overhead view of a makeshift cemetery is a stunner.
Sarnoski has D.W. Griffith’s flair for visceral imagery. His favorite trick is to have us empathize with a close-up of a desperate, vulnerable character and then have Robin brutally mow them down. There’s even a scene of Robin crushing a bunny. You can hear the crunch.
“I robbed and killed for the joy of it, nothing more,” Robin grunts to strangers who hail him as the protector of the meek. Over the course of the running time, he’ll reconnect with Little John (Bill Skarsgård) and befriend a leper (Murray Bartlett), a traumatized young man (Noah Jupe), an angry little girl (Faith Delaney) and a kindly nun-slash-nurse (Jodie Comer) who is so blindingly clean that it’s distracting. He also visits a religious commune and witnesses actual generosity only to remain apathetic about repentance or emotional growth.
It’s a tedious spin on a Wolverine movie Jackman has already made, 2017’s “Logan,” in which his mythic anti-heroic X-Man fosters a ferocious moppet en route to the grave. Lately, I’ve come to prefer Jackman as a showman over a savage. (Many stars can scowl, few can tap dance.) But he looks the part — Jackman has a commendable willingness to recede inside himself — even though after the rousing opening, the script gives him almost nothing to do.
The screenplay’s dirge-like momentum is ironic as Sarnoski has set out to make a movie itself about storytelling. You can tell because of the multiple monologues that kick off with someone asking Robin if he’s ever heard that story about so-and-so and forcing the movie to halt while we listen.
From Robin’s experience, he thinks that “stories can make men do terrible things,” perhaps thinking of all those bereaved family members who were honor-bound to chase after him and get themselves killed. Violence metastasizes. In the medieval era, blood feuds carried on for generations; likewise, today’s wars are often rooted in centuries of pain. Robin doesn’t tell tall tales himself except once and when he does, you can understand why, but not why one listener in particular goes along with it.
But he does have an opinion on how to spin a good yarn. When Little John struggles to describe his dream girl, Robin instructs his protegee to sketch an image with words.
“She had red hair like —” Robin prompts in the manner of a stern third-grade teacher.
“Fresh blood!” Little John blurts.
A hyperactive psychopath, Skarsgård’s Little John is one of the movie’s rare treats. The other is the agonizingly good stunt coordination by Julian Spencer that makes men slide in the mud frantically trying to grab and snap each other’s fingers.
“The Death of Robin Hood’s” one big idea is compelling: History gets written and erased in real time. Characters rarely agree on what happened to whom and frankly, I’m still unsure if one of the father-daughter relationships in here is biological or just pretend. (The cast’s mush-mouthed accents don’t help.) Even today, a time where the slipperiness of facts is a known risk, sticky fables endure — pizza-parlor cabals, dog-eating immigrants, gerbils stuck wherever.
We still hail Robin Hood as an inspirational hero who stole from the rich to give to the poor, forgoing alternate versions in which Robin robs a monk, keeps the money, then kills a dozen men to cover up the crime. But during a week when the canted economy just created its first trillionaire, I can’t fathom why Sarnoski felt we needed this version of Robin Hood now. Disillusionment aside, what’s the point of a Robin Hood who insists on standing for nothing?
Sarnoski is a promising talent with two previous features on his resume: “Pig,” a feral $3-million thriller starring Nicolas Cage, and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” a smart franchise prequel. It’s understandable he wanted to split the difference and make a midsize indie that feels all his, to prove himself with the kind of solemn period picture that people take seriously. He’s earned the right to ask financiers and his building fan base for their trust.
But “The Death of Robin Hood” feels like a director thinking only of his ambitions and not whether he’s making a movie anyone wants to bother to see. The lesson is right there in the film: Audiences decide what gets remembered.
‘The Death of Robin Hood’
Rated: R, for strong bloody violence
Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Playing: Opening Friday in wide release
Sail we must, on Homer’s “wine dark sea” from Ithaca to Asia Minor and many points in between for the greatest story of them all, the tale of “a face, a fleet…of a war with Troy, of a man and a ‘trick’” and “Zeus’s Law, defied at mankind’s peril.
For his latest feat, Christopher Nolan takes us on the epic quest that is the cornerstone of Western literature and Western civilization, Homer’s saga of Odysseus, “hero of the Trojan War,” a trickster ready to wield his brain and his brawn in a titanic struggle not just to win that war, but the many tests that stand between himself and “home.”
And in Nolan’s telling, what makes “The Odyssey” timeless is the remorse of civilization’s unraveling, of the violence and pitiless greed that brings great epochs and empires to an end. Odysseus, played with equal parts cunning and gravitas by Matt Damon, spends his years “coming home” from The Trojan War filled with regret at what he’s seen, what he’s done and what’ he’s caused to come to pass.
His men and even he see himself as “punished” by the gods for his acts, playing god himself as he is forced to choose who lives and who dies. He pay for his hubris with more tests, more violence and more second guessing than we’ve ever seen in in a film or mini-series about him, the original “classic” hero of Western literature.
Nolan’s ancient epic is more historical and slightly grander than Wolfgang Peterson’s mythic star vehicle “Troy,” more touching than the riveting and brutally heroic “300,” and more tactile than either. We’re seeing real seas, realistic reconstructions of ancient armor, cities, galleys of war and a real dog — Argus — waiting for his master to return from decades of fighting and traveling.
Note to “Supergirl” and “Superboy” filmmakers and anybody else thinking “Let’s just digitally animate the damned dog.” Nobody cries when a digital dog dies.
If I’m honest, Nolan’s version of an oft-told tale had me from the moment I saw “the horse,” the “trick” of the tale-teller’s account of “clever” Odysseus. Troy really existed, and if there really was a “Trojan Horse,” I’ll bet it looked a lot like this — half-buried in the surf, a “Planet of the Apes” post-apocalyptic monument and tribute to the gods that had to be hauled, sans wheels, from the sand to the city whose blasphemous undoing it held hidden in its belly.
Nolan’s narrative opens with that “trick,” and tells the tale from three temporal perspectives — the war, as remembered, events back home in the Ithaca with the queen (Anne Hathaway) and son (Tom Holland) that King Odysseus left behind to fight, and the epic quest to return from that war as recalled by Odysseus in the company of his most alluring captor, Calypso (Charlize Theron).
The central conflict isn’t the war, or the murderously ruthless “suitors” for Queen Penelope, foremost among them the handsome and venomous Antinous (Robert Pattinson). It is between Odysseus and his superstitious men as he struggles with hardened warriors (Himesh Patel plays his stoic but questioning second in command) convinced their commanding officer has offended and re-offended the gods, especially Troy’s patron, Poseidon.
“You can’t live by omens and sacrifices,” Odysseus scoffs. But in this “time of apparent magic,” even our Ur-hero is given pause by Cyclops, the Sirens, the enchantress Circe (Samantha Morton) and the gigantic armored man-eaters that confront them, the Laestrygonians.
And even Odysseus has his Mount Olympus spirit guide. Zendaya plays the goddess Athena, who warns him “Your cleverness will get you into trouble.”
As indeed it does.
Damon’s “brand” as an actor has long been the intelligence he conveys in all but the silliest roles. That’s put to great use here as we see him plotting and planning this escape or that ambush. “The gods help those who help themselves,” he preaches. But his Odysseus also lets us see him second-guessing himself, a wearying and ageing man weighed down by the heartbreaking burdens of leadership.
Hathaway, in the role of the dutiful wife weaving and unraveling her tapestry while bullying suitors impose themselves on her household, shows us her own burdens. She said “Promise me you’ll come back.” And all she’s left with, decades later, is rising anger at the plight her long-absent and presumed-dead husband has placed her in. She is queen, but their overmatched son (Tom Holland) is too unsophisticated and physically weak to take the throne in the presence of entitled, murderous brutes.
Jon Bernthal brings a rough bluntness to the gruff Menelaus of Sparta, a hardnosed ruler dragged into war when Helen (Lupita Nyong’o) ran away from his brother Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) to Troy.
And John Leguizamo nimbly plays the loyal blind swineherd who tries to help Penelope and son Telemachus (Holland) cling to power as long as possible against long odds that his master, Odysseus, might return. Horror icon Mia Goth plays Penelope’s treacherous handmaiden.
Nolan’s “all-star cast” makes something of a statement in terms or the film’s intentions and modern messaging. The first character we see is played by the transgender actor Page, with a Black Helen of Troy and Black and Asian characters giving this ancient world the cosmopolitan flavor it most certainly had.
A running theme through all this is the breakdown of an old order, “Zeus’s Law” about piety, square dealing and how to treat strangers and guests and the rest of the human race, Trojans included. Nolan is talking about the “Dark Ages” to come, and the “Dark Ages” which have revisited us whenever the people lose their way and the violent and rapacious are empowered over us, often at our own doing.
Take a gander at insensate monster Cyclops and who he seems to resemble. Imagine him in a diaper if you have trouble making the connection.
This “Odyssey” is almost exactly what we’d expect from Nolan, a very good film not on a par with the unnerving novelty of “Inception,” lacking the poetry and stunning suspense of “Dunkirk” — just an epic yarn given epic treatment/
This is a filmmaker who has something to say to modern audiences, and a pretty good idea of how to say it within the context of a 3000 year old tale of “a face” that “launched” a “fleet” of “a thousand ships,” of “clever” Odysseus” and the gods and all-too-human men who bedeviled him every step of his guilt-ridden and bloody journey “home.”
Rating: R, graphic violence, nudity, profanity
Cast: Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Elliot Page, John Leguizamo, Samantha Morton, James Remar, Ryan Hurst, Mia Goth, Jon Bernthal and Charlize Theron
Credits: Scripted and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on “The Odyssey” by Homer. A Universal release.
Running time: 2:52
Kris Jenner’s mom, Mary Jo “MJ” Shannon, has died.
Jenner announced the news of Shannon’s death Thursday in an Instagram tribute. She was 91.
“Today, we said goodbye to my beautiful Mommy MJ. … There are no words that could ever capture what she has meant to me or the heartbreak of having to say goodbye. My mom was the heart of our family.”
Jenner wrote that her mother, the matriarch of the Jenner-Kardashian clan, taught her everything that “truly matters.”
“To love your family fiercely, to be kind, to show up for the people you love, and to never take a single moment together for granted,” she wrote alongside a glamour shot of Shannon. “She taught us that family is everything. She showed us how to love unconditionally and how to find joy in the little moments. She showed me how to face life’s challenges with resilience and faith.”
Jenner concluded the post with an open letter to MJ:
“Mom, thank you for every sacrifice you made, every piece of wisdom you shared, and every moment you loved us so completely. I will miss our daily talks, your smile, your laughter… Our hearts are broken, but we find comfort knowing that love like yours never truly leaves us. Your love will live on in our family, in our traditions, in every moment we are together, and in every life you touched. When I look at my kids and my grandkids, I will forever see pieces of you in all of us. There is not a part of me that isn’t shaped by you. And if I have done anything right in this world, it’s because I spent my life trying to live in a way that would make you proud. Every memory, every moment, every blessing, it was all because of you, and I will forever thank God every single day for making you my mommy. My heart is broken into a million pieces… thank you for giving me the greatest childhood and oh what a beautiful blessed life… I love you forever Mommy. Thank you for giving us everything.”
Born Mary Jo Campbell on July 26, 1934, MJ married her high school sweetheart, whom she divorced two months later. Then in 1954, she wed Jenner’s dad, Robert “Bob” True Houghton. She gave birth to Jenner the following year and Jenner’s late sister, Karen Houghton, in 1958. After seven years of marriage, MJ and Bob called it quits and she married Harry Shannon, a businessman who helped raise Jenner and her sister in San Diego, where MJ ran a children’s clothing store.
Harry Shannon died in 2003.
MJ was featured on the famous clan’s E! reality series “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and the follow-up Hulu series “The Kardashians” numerous times over the years. In a clip from the show, granddaughter Kim Kardashian detailed that her grandmother had survived colon cancer and breast cancer and, in her sunset years, struggled with sickness resulting from the cancer treatments.
In one clip from the show, MJ said she didn’t have an appetite without taking her “medication” first. Then she persuaded her daughter, Jenner, to have marijuana gummies with her. Together they lit some incense and munched on muffins and chips and guacamole.
In another clip, Jenner interviews MJ about her life, and during the sit-down, Jenner asks MJ, “What’s your biggest fear?”
MJ replies, “I try not to fear,” and then follows up asking Jenner what her biggest fear is.
Jenner starts to cry and says, “I don’t want to say it. I can’t believe I’m crying. … Just, losing someone.”
On Thursday, Kim Kardashian caught flak online when a post featuring the Skims mogul and her sister Khloe Kardashian swigging tequila from a boat on a lake published shortly after Jenner announced the news of MJ’s death.
“This post was scheduled a few days ago before we lost MJ, so its timing came right alongside her passing,” Kim wrote in the comment section of the post. “I’ve been by my mom and grandma’s side this past week, and my heart is completely with my family right now. We love and miss her so deeply, and in the days ahead, we’ll be focusing on celebrating her beautiful life.”
Kim followed up with a post celebrating her grandmother, writing, “My sweet Grandma MJ, my best friend, my gossip buddy, my forever twin … You taught all of us the importance of family, and those values are something we’ll carry with us forever!!!!! You were the woman who showed me what it meant to be a hardworking businesswoman. You gave me my very first job at your store in San Diego and taught me lessons about work ethic, strength, and confidence that I’ve carried with me ever since.
“You always believed in me, championed me, and were my safe place. You truly were the matriarch of our family, and your love is woven into all of us. I know you’re at peace now. Give Papa Harry, Aunt Karen, and my dad a hug for me. You will always be a part of me, I love you soooooo much and I will miss you forever and ever. … YOU ARE THE BEST OF US!!!”
Two weeks ago, Jenner’s bodyguard, Mason Haynes, who also worked as a close protection guard for other members of the Kardashian-Jenner family, died in a traffic accident. He was 52.
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