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.
