I get the point that other reviewers have made, a lot of Shakespeare's works do work in a modern setting. But to me, it only works if you also update the dialogue. I found the text jarring with the setting, the exact text (as far as I could tell) spoken in an utterly different context. Zero believability. No basis for a suspension of disbelief.If they'd had the sense to update the language a bit and make it fit a 21st century authoritarian regime it might have worked a lot better, at least for me.It also lost the clues in the prophecies that fool Macbeth, that could have been included without difficulty.

This filming of Goold's production of Macbeth makes no bones (or blood, or torn entrails) about its roots in extreme violence. This is a Macbeth that is, at times, as much SAW or The Ring as it is the wordplay. This is not, in my view, a bad thing: Stewart is one of the few actors who can stand up against this kind of visceral attack and not be overwhelmed. I found the witches, in their surgical masks and wielding autopsy saws, to be truly nasty spectres; they're continually lurking around in the background of the play, with their scenes integrated skillfully into the rest of the action. The sound design is enormous, as of the bombardment of Stalingrad, and at times again threatens to become over-whelming; the atmosphere is of a world already dead, already blasted into dust. Kate Fleetwood's Lady Macbeth is so frightfully evil, with her terrifying bone-structure and icy manner, that she sometimes threatens to become the centre of the play's evil.This is a combination of Shakespeare, 1984, torture-porn and Eisenstein: a big, brutal, blasting Macbeth for a very modern audience. I cannot imagine the schoolboy who would not be enthralled, though it might repel the older audience member.PS: regarding the earlier reviewer: Macbeth does NOT 'admonish' his wife with the phrase about 'bring forth men children only': it is the ultimate COMPLIMENT in a male dominated society as he goes on to prove with the words 'for thy UNDAUNTED mettle should compose nothing but men'. The Macbeths are NOT young: he is a mature man: they have had children 'I have given suck' and their child is dead or gone; that is plain. If the scene has any contradictions, it's that, being past their chances of parenthood 'he has no children', he should hint that she will be fertile again. This production solves that problem neatly by providing a significant age difference between the two leads: Macbeth the older man and the Lady nearing the end of her fertility.

The richness of Shakespeare's plays, and the vagueness of their settings, lends them to many adaptations and interpretations. This version of Macbeth, the "Scottish play", doesn't feel particularly Scottish, more Orwellian, and Patrick Stewart plays the central character less as an opportunistic chancer out of his depth, and more as a deranged psychopathic tyrant: if the film resembles any other, it's 'Downfall', the story of the last days of Hitler. As always when watching Shakespeare, one is stunned by the sheer number of brilliant phrasings that have entered general usage from his works. But Macbeth is an odd play dramatically: the main action occurs offstage, the leavening self-referential humour present in 'Hamlet' is here lacking, and there are few appealing characters. In Kenneth Brannagh's version of 'Hamlet', for example, I really enjoyed Derek Jacobi's ambiguous Claudius; but in this story, there is little other than war and death. As a film, it also falls between two stools, as it is shot neither naturalistically, nor with the brilliant invention of Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo + Juliet'; rather, it feels like a stage play jazzed up with the occasional camera trick. So I'm not sure this is the best of Shakespeare's tragedies, nor that this is my favourite production; but it's certainly intense. Indeed, if this was once popular entertainment, one can only regret the undemanding nature of modern tastes.

This is the best film performance of Macbeth which I have seen. It ranks with Ian McKellen's Richard III (1994/5) as a definitive production in an "updated" setting. Like McKellen's Richard III, Goold's Macbeth uses a staging suggestive of late 1930's - and does not seem out of place any more the McKellen's Richard III did. Patrick Stewart's interpretation and presentation of the Macbeth character is dynamic and cover's a wide range of expression. His Macbeth has a hesitant and sometimes seeming incomplete descent into pure evil. It was a masterful and dynamic performance. However, in my opinion, Stewart's co-star, Kate Fleetwood, just about steals the show. Her Lady Macbeth is pure evil from the start - she comes across as the cold pit viper lacking only visible fangs. Her performance here is truly the best I have seen since I saw Judith Anderson give a TV performance a long time ago. The integration of the 3 witches into the action throughout as 3 triage nurses was an imaginative element. This is a "hold on to your seat" production - grabbing your attention right at the start and moving at a steady pace to the last syllable of (its) recorded time - you will not leave your chair.