Macbeth

Film-makers have spent 108 pointless years trying to turn Shakespeare’s immortal plays into topical films. The first silent footage of Herbert Beerbohm Tree semaphoring King John from a West End stage should have convinced the most enthusiastic impresario that the idea was a nonstarter. But Shakespeare’s supernatural influence on cinema continues to generate a staggering number of indifferent films with dismal box office returns. You can count the lucrative exceptions on the fingers of one hand. Geoffrey Wright’s gangland version of Macbeth is not one of them, despite the fact that his murky thriller takes its cues (if none of the magic) from Baz Luhrmann’s thriller Romeo + Juliet.

Wright’s gory horror is set in the Melbourne netherworld of drug lords and strip clubs. The plot is shaved to the bone. And it has the raw atmosphere of an ailing theatre production in the late-night slot at the Hen & Chickens. A noisy sound-track tries to manipulate the adrenalin. A bloody shoot-out with a rival gang elevates Sam Worthington’s mop-top henchman Macbeth up the pecking order. The pill-popping hero is the only actor who seems to understand his mumbled lines. The rest of the cast can’t deliver a couplet without sounding desperately camp or deeply embarrassed.