Revengers Tragedy

Clever screen modernizations of classic drama make sense to me. I loved Ethan Hawke in HAMLET, Emma Thompson in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Kevin Klein in A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM, etc.

This is a masterful adaptation/reformulation of THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY. It's intelligent, fast-paced, witty, shocking, engaging, and faithful to the spirit of the original.

I intend to use it in conjunction with teaching the original to Advanced Placement English students in a public high school.

As a certain 20th-century poet said, "Don't criticize what you can't understand." This is a nearly flawless production for anyone who loves the history of theater or who loves great cinema.

A real cinematic treat, this film takes a play published in 1607 and transposes it to a strange modern(ish) world. Cox's direction is brilliantly inventive, giving the film a fast-paced anarchic feel that never becomes just a showy veneer. The stylised langauge and the modern visuals work very well. Christopher Eccleston as the "revenger" is superb, as is Derek Jacobi (as you've never seen him before!). Highly recommended.

Alex Cox brings us a gleefully over-the-top adaptation of a Jacobean revenge play. Where Shakespeare was the high culture of his day, this piece (originally performed anonymously, presumably to shield its author from any repercussions due to its distinctly anti-authoritarian slant) plays out more like a 17th-century Leone movie. In this version, the action has been transferred to a vaguely-defined post-nuclear-war Liverpool, ruled over by an amoral Duke and terrorized by his violent sons.

The cast is great (especially Derek Jacobi and Christopher Eccleston) and the whole film is characterized by an intense spirit of fun. My only problem (as a yank) was that -- in spite of years spent enjoying British TV -- I found the combination of archaic syntax and scouse accents to be incomprehensible at times. Fortunately, the subtitles on the DVD made it much easier to follow the dialogue and plot line.

This certainly won't be to everyone's tastes, but it's a good one.

I have just seen the premier of this film at the Cambridge Film Festival, and it is superb. Christopher Eccleston is demented as the lead role, and Eddie Izzard at last cuts out the buffonery and lives up to his promise. Chumbuwumba provide and excelent soundtrack, and the costume designers have seen too many Adam Ant videos. The scouse touches bring the film down to earth just when it seems to get away. Better performances, and directing, would be difficult to see.

The acting is tremendous, the dialogue is delivered with such ease and intensity, and where there is caddiness-- it is intentional. This movie is visually beautiful and unapologetic; it does not bore you with tedious dialogue, but challenges the audience to mesh both Jacobean language with a modern day setting. Other movies have tried to accomplish this time fold, attempting to 'modernize' what they consider to be classics, but other movies did not have Christopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard. There performances deserved more credit than the average moviegoer could afford. See this movie.