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.

If you're familiar with this Shakespearian tragedy, just blend it into a crime movie, while keeping the dialogue in tact, as if spouted out of fellow stage thespians. But remember here, this is film. An interesting and experimental idea, unfortunately while being immensely entertaining, fails ultimately on one level, cause the thespian uttered dialogue doesn't work or gel. If done like 1990's Men of Respect, who knows how this would of turned out. Probably not much better I reckon'. But still, this is a bloody good show helped by some colorful performances from some actors, you'll underestimate. I'm chiefly speaking about Mick Molloy who does his best work, as a merciless hit-man, killing a mother and child with barbwire. The photography is fantastic, from it's hand-held opening. Macbeth boasts style and is something different, from a director who makes very few movies. Wright's 4th pic is almost up with Romper Stomper, although I have yet to see Cherry Falls.

No matter what well-meaning directors decide to do to Mr. Shakespeare, he will survive--and every time some folks decide to re-interpret the play, he is, in some way, enriched--sometimes sometimes just through another exposure, but often as in this mod "Gangster Version," something like the frequently asked question "Did the Macbeths have any children?" will pop up and get discussed.An early scene in this Aussie Macbeth has Lady Macbeth grieving over a dead child's tombstone, giving her a lot of motivation for ensuing diabolical actions; Although there is excessive violence in the film, Mr. Shakespeare can take credit for a good deal of it--consider the dozens of times the word "blood" appears in the play--it's justified.Unless the viewer is familiar with the play, this film may not make a lot of sense, as the original Shakespearian language is used--but cut, considerably. Would that the actor playing Banquo or Macduff had been cast as Macbeth, as Sam Worthington, while adequate, lacks the intense charisma such a tortured soul needs, and looks a little more like an unhappy rock star. Nevertheless, save for some naughty nude semi-orgies, this would be a good film to show to a high school class, comparing it, for instance, to the bare-bones Orson Welles version, which was filmed on unused Republic Film Studio western sets--sprayed with water! The Welles version, sometimes hard to listen to as his actors often use a heavy Scots brogue, shows considerably more strength, has an exciting visual sense and cleaves to the theme in lieu of modern attitude.

A very hyped-up, slick, edgy reinterpretation.They've fallen into the "because it's modern, it has to be hyped-up, slick, etc." trap."Romeo and Juliet" carried this idea off much more successfully, but I really think it's time we move beyond the two extremes here (period piece vs. edgy film).Just because this is a "modern" retelling, doesn't mean the movie has to look like a magazine ad, or have anything to do with drugs or guns.If the trappings were as subtle as the honeyed words, Macbeth would be a far more powerful film. As it is, read your Shakespeare. Read it out loud. Ask your Oxford dictionary some questions. Skip the film. Or don't, but you've been warned.Sorry for the super-long review. IMDb made me do it.