On screen, Robin Hood has been robbing from the rich to feed the poor for nearly as long as movies have been made. The likes of Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner and Sean Connery have put their imprint on the character, portraying him as everything from a swashbuckling rogue to a battle-hardened crusader. Even Walt Disney got in on the action, depicting Sherwood Forest as an animated haven for anthropomorphic foxes, bears and chickens. Given the dozens of films about Robin Hood, Michael Sarnoski, the director of “Pig” and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” worried there wasn’t much left to say about the famous thief.
“I loved the legend since I was a little kid,” Sarnoski says. “But I loved the ballad about the death of Robin Hood almost as much. This idea that this immortal folkloric figure also has a very human, simple, quiet death stayed with me.”
So Sarnoski used the story of Robin Hood’s last days as a jumping off point to offer a very different look at the outlaw, one that treated him as a haunted, guilt-stricken figure whose criminality is a matter of survival, not charity. It’s a savage take on the fable that is more aligned with “Unforgiven” or “Valhalla Rising” than the kind-hearted, tights-wearing merry men from so many movies.
