Macbeth is ultimately lacking a clear stylistic identity.

Rating: 4/10 (17 October 2015)

At a screening of Macbeth, an elderly couple cackled to each other when told the name of this website and asked if this film could become a video game. Perhaps Macbeth Effect I thought. This critic's mind isn't full of scorpions. It's a legitimate question about what form Shakespeare's work will take in the future, as it's appropriated to contemporary mediums like modern cinema and video games. These are competing modes and sometimes intertwined in their bid to capture the attention of the broadening mass market. In adapting Shakespeare to cinema, it's not essential to retain the original Early Modern English dialogue but to express the thematic content of the stories within distinct images because cinema is, rather uniquely, a predominantly visual medium. But Australian director Justin Kurzel, who last made the local murder thriller Snowtown (2011) before shifting to Hollywood, has struggled to translate Macbeth into a cinematic form, despite being aided by heavyweight actors Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, playing Macbeth and his scheming wife.
Full review at:
http://www.impulsegamer.com/macbeth-film-review/