The recent Australian one, transposing the play to a Melbourne gangland setting. I was predisposed towards liking the film, but actually found it a bit underwhelming - while the concept has possibilities, and those possibilities are realised to the extent that the moody, matt-and-shadow settings, garish costumes and foreboding score work well, this Macbeth struck me as fundamentally uninspired and unimaginative.
See, for me, while the film's good to look at, it fails to reconceptualise the subject-matter of the play in line with its altered setting - that's what I think is the underlying imaginative failure. A good example is the way the dialogue is delivered straight, in Australian accents - there's nothing wrong with that per se, but it's as if the makers of the film relied on the mere fact of difference/novelty to make this Macbeth watching, without any more (in fact, a further quibble here is that those lines aren't particularly well delivered - but that seems more a failure of execution than of conception).
Related to this are shortcomings in the way this revisioning represents its characters and the narrative as a whole. I don't mind unusual or new takes on either of these elements when it comes to Shakespeare and his canonical co - indeed, 'positively welcome' would be a better description than 'don't mind' - but it's disappointing when, as here, there doesn't seem to be any particular take at all.
Anyhow, I don't want to seem too negative about this film. I enjoyed watching it, and on one level it's well done. But it didn't satisfy me at all.
