Not one of W. Shakespeare's better known, and watching this punchy adaptation made me wonder if that might be because its central character, Caius Martius Coriolanus (here, the chimerical Ralph Fiennes as a believably self-contained, snarling soldier), is a rather opaque figure, devoid (at least in this film version) of illuminating soliloquies or clear motivations beyond a tendency towards moral inflexibility and absolutism and a disregard for the good opinion of others, plus an ultimately fatal propensity to be swayed by his mother (played as a formidable matriarchal figure by Vanessa Redgrave)...it actually felt closer to Greek tragedy than any of his other histories or tragedies that I'm familiar with. Anyhow, as a piece of film-making, pretty watchable, with the contemporisation effective, if the plotting/characterisation was a bit truncated-feeling in some ways due presumably to its origins on stage.
