Less than the sum of its parts

Rating: 7/10 (7 March 2016)

The story of Macbeth is brilliant, by far my favorite of Shakespeare's plays. The lines, the dialogue and soliloquies are also top notch. Polanski's Macbeth is one of my favorite films, if not my all time favorite.
The cinematography here is amazing. The soundtrack is wonderful (I bought it). The scenes are so beautiful; the action is so awesome, thrilling yet artful. The casting is also very good.
All the components are great, all the ingredients are there, but the film is less than the sum of its parts.
The biggest flaw is the mumbling and inaudible/unintelligible parts (I watched the film with English subtitles for friends that struggled with Early Modern English), but that's not why the film is merely good. Improve the quality of the speech and it's still less than the sum of its parts.
The film is not thrilling, not haunting, not exciting. It's too theatrical. It cannot escape comparisons with Polanski's film, which felt like a psychological horror film.
The acting feels theatrical and feels fake - you're watching someone playing a part rather than a king struggling with his thoughts. The delivery of the lines feels like the actors memorized the lines very well, but not for a moment did I feel that these are Medieval-era Scots that actually speak like that.
I feel that this could've been a great movie had it had another story altogether. The story of Macbeth, normally a positive, ruined this film's potential, with lines and language that killed the realness of the acting and the story having no surprise to most people. All the ingredients (except the story) were there for a great medieval film instead of yet another Macbeth interpretation.