david-sarkies Upon sitting down to write a rant about this film I suddenly realised that there are actually quite a few cinematic versions of The Scottish Play and there are a number that I would like to see (and own, particularly the new Patrick Stewart version, and the Roman Polanski version) that I sometime wonder if I will end up going over old ground. However, considering that this is a rant, and this version is, and would be different, to the other versions, plus the source document, that it should be okay.This is an Australian production of the Scottish Play by the director of Romper Stomper (which is a good movie, and a tragedy to boot, though not at the standard of the Shakespearian tragedies) and I call this movie by the tag of 'Macbeth with Machine Guns'. I must admit, I really do like the concept of Macbeth with Machine Guns, and though putting Elizabethan English into a setting involving the contemporary Melbourne underworld does cause problems, I guess we can sit back and watch an excessively bloody and violent Shakespeare play made even more so. I remember taking my sister to see this film, and she was horrified. Not only due to the sex (and while Shakespeare is not pornographic, sex does play a role within his plays), but also due to the violence. My response was 'welcome to Shakespeare'.In this film, I have to say that Lady Macbeth is a bitch. She is truly the villain, and while the witches enchant Macbeth (and I wonder if the sexual elements to Macbeth's encounter with the witches was the intention of Shakespeare) it is Lady Macbeth that goads Macbeth into performing the deed. Of course, once he has done the deed, while he is crowned king, his kingdom quickly falls apart as he begins to kill everybody that poses a threat to him. One of the lines that struck me is when he says that since he killed a man in his sleep, he will never again get a good night's sleep.This is a good, low budget film, and quite clever as well. The scene about the woods coming to Dunsinae involves a truck with logs on the back, and then Macbeth's enemies sneak into his house hiding in the logs on the truck. There is also the police presence in which they have Macbeth under surveillance, however I believe that these scenes were added to give the play a much more contemporary feeling, and I note that they do not come into the film at the end. It is simply a gang war, and I feel that this is probably a really good contemporary setting for the play.While watching this, I wondered if one could do a similar thing with King Lear. I believe we could, placing the scene into the East End of London (similar to Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels). I also wonder if we could play with the dialogue a bit, such as changing the word sword to gun. Still, if I were to make a contemporary movie based on a Shakespeare play, then it would be Julius Ceaser with jet fighters.A final thing I liked about the movie is that there are a lot of scenes were there is action, but no dialogue. I thought that that was very well done by Wright. Obviously he did not want to add any more to the dialogue than Shakespeare already had, and simply used action to outline what is happening before and between the scenes. That is a similar thing that Stoppard does in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead (though what he does is have the poetic dialogue of Shakespeare during the scenes from Shakespeare, and ordinary vernacular outside of those scenes). I believe if any more dialogue was added to what Shakespeare had, then it would have destroyed the movie. Granted, while Elizabethan poetic English does not seem to sit well in a contemporary gangland setting, one simply cannot beat Shakespeare's masterful use of the English language.

Alex Bolam Geoffrey Wright's modern rendition of Shakespeare's Macbeth does little credit to the Jacobean genius. From start to finish the film distracts from the plot line, the language is confusing, and the screenplay is pointlessly violent. Sam Worthington plays the drug lord of Melbourne Macbeth and Victoria Hill plays his, perse, open minded wife, but it does seem that Miss Hill has an obsession with her anatomy that diverts our attention from the poor acting. Duncan (pre-death) is the drug lord slaughtered by Macbeth, sparking the non-stop bloodbath reminiscent of the SAW franchise. Macbeth then begins an unnecessarily brutal killing spree claiming friends, women and children alike. The film culminates to feeble shootout between Macduff's (Lachy Halme) henchmen and Macbeth's cronies. All thanks to Macbeth's psychotic need to kill women and children of course. Note the disturbingly perverse pleasure that the assassins take in their deaths. One appears to climax as he kills Mrs Macduff. Nice.The film, amazingly, is a total disaster, Shakespeares tragedy concerns love and ambition, and the characters are strangely moving. This rendition is moving-to the bathroom. Wright sees fit to play upon tiresome clichés such as; amorous school-girl-witches, who seduce men twice their age on foggy dance floors; angry gun toting Australians;and blood splattering at the screen at every second turn. If only it were in 3-D.Macbeth is instead shown with a 'Jack Sparrow' attitude-a swagger, and an affiliation for "rum and salty WITCHES" (At World's End). Only Macbeth isn't funny and yes, he solves problems by shooting them, he does so with none of the grace or finesse of our Captain. All Macbeth does that IS canon to an ambitious, violent, superstitious tyrant-king is that he IS violent. He makes up for the lack of the other attributes with that. Which isn't helped by the confusing and pointless Jacobean dialogue. Had Miss Hill decided against using "Ye Olde English" the film may have been a minor success, meriting perhaps and extra star or two.Alas, it was not to be, Hill clearly of the opinion that gun-toting, drugged up Aussies are of a cultured sort.Take the penultimate and final scenes for example, where that unconvincing showdown concerning Macbeth and Macduff begins. Note how its the only scene where the killings are sort of justified. Well the last of Macduff's is anyway. This would be fine, however the Miss Hill's final scene demanded once again she get her kit off-only this time shes dead in a bath of her own blood. One last pathetically (albeit not unexpected) pointless display of both Wright's and Hill's perversion to sexual violence. Even Cap'n Jack would be bored of her by now.In short, if sex, brutality, drugs and promiscuous teenage witches is your bag-go see it. If not-don't. Just don't bring the wife and kids!

Indyrod My favorite Macbeth movie adaptation is by far Roman Polanski, which is also one of my favorite movies. This Australian production, directed by Geoffrey Wright, brings the Macbeth story to modern times in the Melbourne underworld. Sam Worthington gives a great performance as Macbeth who along with his crazy Wife Lady Macbeth, plan out to kill the crime boss King Duncan (of course), allowing Macbeth to take over the power. This movie may seem silly at first, I wasn't sure how I was going to like it, but as the movie progresses and the actors recite the Shakespeare dialogue, I found myself drawn into the Macbeth story which I truly love. Along with a very good soundtrack and performances by all, I like this modern Macbeth very much. Shakespeare's Macbeth is a very violent story to begin with, and this version carries that off with plenty of blood and violence. This of course is not for everyone, but being a fan of Macbeth, I enjoyed it.

fertilecelluloid Geoffrey Wright, the director of "Romper Stomper", transplants Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in the contemporary, criminal underworld of Melbourne, Australia. The result is a semi-awful piece of cinema. Sam Worthington is Macbeth, and walks around looking very self-conscious and bored. Victoria Hill, who wrote the script with Wright, is Lady Macbeth, and she's neither awful nor good. Lachy Hulme, who plays McDuff, is the only actor in the cast who exudes any kind of authority. The rest, including Gary Sweet, are wasted and misdirected. Shot on HD by the late Will Gibson, the movie's visuals lack character. Everything is too clean and too deliberately lit. Wright's direction is uninspired in the extreme and the action sequences are confusing and inept. Marketed erroneously as "the most violent Australia movie ever", the film is violent at times and reasonably bloody, but it fails to deliver a single impactful moment. Slow moving and terribly pretentious, this umpteenth silver screen version of the classic play is the personification of wrong-headed.