The rush into gunfights and car chases pushes the text in all the wrong directions. As written, the 400-year-old words are still fresher than anything ripped from “Miami Vice.”
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The famous soliloquies are heard in voice-over -- a risky idea that works -- and Wright has found clever ways of naturalizing the play's more supernatural elements.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Crust
The film is strictly straight-to-video action movie stuff, albeit with dialogue in iambic pentameter.
Say hello to my leetle dagger! Shakespeare meets "Scarface" in an Aussie adaptation of "Macbeth" gone gangsta.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The words belong to Mr. Shakespeare. All else in this Macbeth is the pleasurably fevered invention of brash Australian director Geoffrey Wright.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips
It's all very "Scarface"--the De Palma remake of "Scarface," not the Hawks original. In other words, it doesn't feel modern at all. It feels about a generation late and 400 years short.