Adapted by Roman Polanski and legendary British critic Kenneth Tynan (who described the diminutive director as “the four-foot Pole you wouldn’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole”), this is a blood-drenched, OTT version of “the Scottish play”. Baz Luhrman’s recontextualised Romeo + Juliet showed that Shakespeare can make compelling cinema, but Polanski’s stab at the bard is messy. Holds the attention, but the poetry and meaning are often drowned by the gore.
DVD Extras:
Trailer. English teachers will be pleased to see a version likely to attract teenage boys, but this disc is shabby. Where's the imagination? A subtitle track translating the dialogue into modern English would have been interesting, but we don't even get bog-standard subtitles. (Mc)Duff.
