Middlebrow hucksters Bob and Harvey Weinstein serve up a Shakespeare adaptation for the holiday season, opting for the medieval-historical angle: the Scottish soldiers all stomp around in grungy Braveheart war paint, and the settings consist mainly of candlelit hovels and mist-shrouded battlefields. As the title character and his scheming wife, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard contribute stiff, actorly performances, and director Justin Kurzel seems more concerned with getting the right squishy sound for a dagger thrust to the intestines than with any kind of thematic thrust. In the screenplay’s most notable innovation, Macduff’s wife and son are not murdered by soldiers but burned at the stake for all the community to witness, though a jump cut elides their actual consumption by fire; it’s emblematic of a movie that longs to be tasteful and sordid at the same time. With David Thewlis and Paddy Considine.
Macbeth
R • 1 hour 53 min • 2015
