Aussie Director Geoffrey Wright, who introduced the world to Russell Crowe in his disturbing 1992 feature Romper Stomper, arrived recently on American shores with a reintroduction of sorts to William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, updated to the present day Australian underworld.
Sam Worthington portrays the tortured title character, which, under Wright’s sculpting, plays like a glam-rock, psychopath sexpot who just signed his first record deal with the devil. Wright’s erotic style sets an appealing stage with hot guns, wet streets, and blurry colored lights.
But he stumbles through the essential building blocks of the legend, leaving enthusiasts shaking their heads and the uninitiated unsure of the characters’ relationships, improperly greased for Shakespeare’s fateful plot twists, and unsympathetic to Macbeth‘s transformation from loyal soldier to cursed traitor.
Though Wright’s storytelling is flawed and his images at times too precious, the cast’s inability to embody and breathe modern life into Shakespeare’s truncated verse is what ultimately cripples his otherwise well-intentioned bombast.
However, all is not lost in this adaptation as Wright is a quality image maker, and when those images turn violent, this film takes flight. As Macbeth‘s world falls apart in the final act, Wright and cinematographer Will Gibson leave stiff B-movie close-ups and stilted soliloquies behind, and take the audience on a revenge-fueled hell ride.
The actors seem less tongue-tied, and Wright lets it all boil over in an Abel Ferrara-esqe finale that saves the film. This reincarnation certainly is not for Shakespeare traditionalists, but full of bang and sleaze for the groundlings.
-Mike Hobart
Macbeth
Director: Geoffrey Wright
109 Minutes, Union Station Media
www.officialmacbethmovie.com
Opened 6/15/07 in limited U.S. release
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