51/100
Or is it the rebirth of Logan? Couldn’t shake the awareness that I’d already watched Hugh Jackman wearily wrestle with a lifetime’s violent legacy, while simultaneously protecting a young girl; the Robin Hood legend facilitates significantly more de-mythologizing than an Aging Wolverine tale could pull off, but that aspect gets foregrounded in a monologue right up front (been a while since I’ve seen a movie with a bona fide thesis statement) and never exactly retreats into subtext thereafter. Act one exults in explicit, nauseating brutality that makes The Northman look like South Park, following which Sarnoski shifts into contemplative mode, once again letting his lead actor’s haunted, bearded visage and soft-spoken manner do most of the work. What made Pig special, though, was its offbeat context—watching a long-retired celebrity chef hunt down his stolen truffle pig has a lot more unexpected, nervy charge than does witnessing guilt-ridden Robin Hood dismiss every heroic story about his exploits as bullshit and gradually get his affairs in order (plus bond with a moppet). Took me a long time to realize this was loosely based on the same source as Lester’s Robin and Marian (which I just recently watched), as that film superimposed Maid Marian onto the unrelated prioress who’s played by Jodie Comer here; the two pictures end pretty much exactly the same way, and it choked me up again the second time. Still too much familiarity both in Jackman’s exhausted performance and in the film’s general puncturing Behind the Legend impulse. Sarnoski’s infused enough of his sensibility into these IP exercises that he can’t yet be considered a sellout, but it’s dispiriting nonetheless to see him pivot to them so speedily.