Anarchy

This movie is a big disappointment, not because it didn't meet my expectations, but because I couldn't even watch it.

Ed Harris is one of my favorite actors, and the description of the movie on the DVD box sounded pretty good. It didn't say though that "a modern retelling of Shakespeare's timeless tragedy" meant that the dialog would be Shakespeare's original Early Modern English used in a modern setting.

Of course not. Otherwise, who in their right mind would want to watch it? What were the people who made this movie thinking? I still respect the actors who appeared in this feature. I'll call it temporary insanity.

When I first heard the Early Modern English, I thought "this has got to be for effect at the start of the movie – surely it will switch over to regular dialog any moment." When it didn't, I jumped to the next chapter, and the next chapter, and the next chapter …

You have got to be kidding me! It seems many viewers feel the same based on the low user rating.

I'm so grateful that I didn't go to see this movie in a theater. If I had, I might have been compelled to stick it out. Come to think of it, it would have been the ultimate experience for a first date. You would probably get married and have something to laugh about for the rest of your lives together! I'm not going to rate or comment further on a movie I didn't watch. By the way, I almost never bail on a movie – about one in every 500 or so.

I could not endure to watch it. Maybe thou can.

Going to the theater to watch CYMBELINE reminded me of times spent being selected to serve on a jury: I had to throw out all my preconceptions and concentrate on the case as presented. Thanks to generally earnest and well-measured performances by the cast, the piece is gripping but by its conclusion is unconvincing and somewhat an empty exercise.

There's no denying director Michael Almereyda's creativity in slashing the play's contents to manageable length while retaining the beauty and power of the Bard's language. But this is familiar territory for film buffs, poaching on maverick NYC director Abel Ferrara's vision of a nihilistic parallel world New York, which he explored most successfully in influential films KING OF NEW YORK, MS. 45 and BAD LIEUTENANT. Almereyda's style is quite different, adopting an ultra-serious mood of foreboding, while Abel's explosive approach was far less wimpy, often pushing or breaking through the limits of X-rated (now NC-17) filmmaking.

Leavening this heavy, self-important mood is almost non-stop relief (almost comic) provided by anachronisms, with a NY setting imposed awkwardly on the war between ancient Romans and occupied Britons. (Abel would have cast Brits w/their distinctive accents vs. Italian/Americans with Bronx or Broroklyn twangs, but Almereyda employs a disparate ethnic mix on both sides of the equation which I found completely arbitrary apart from its "urban ethnic" slant.) This brand of humor was pioneered by the late British powerhouse Ken Russell in the '60s and '70s with works ranging from THE DEVILS to LISZTOMANIA, and is channeled by Almereyda by way of Russell's only current imitator in cinema, Baz Luhrmann (of ROMEO + JULIET fame or infamy).

Strong portrayals of the key adversaries by Ed Harris (Briton Cymbeline, as a meth drug/gang leader king) and Vondie Curtis-Hall (as the local Roman officer by way of upstate NY) are further enhanced by an even greater gravitas displayed by Delroy Lindo as the tough but kindly protector of the king's two missing sons, who he has raised and sheltered to adulthood.

Rest of the cast is variable, starting with chief protagonist Posthumus played as a handsome but rather wan figure by Penn Badgley. Overshadowing him in a memorable turn is current It girl (of 50 SHADES OF GREY) Dakota Johnson as Cymbeline's daughter Imogen, the princess, in love with Posthumus. She is very empathetic throughout the film and morphs handily into a Shailene Woodleigh lookalike in later reels when hiding out with hair cut off as boy in the usual Shakespearean cross-dressing mode.

Top-billed Ethan Hawke (who previously was a NYC HAMLET for the director) is riveting and thoroughly immersed in the text as the villain of the piece, who sets much of the melodrama in motion via his creepy wager with Posthumus that he can deflower Imogen easily. The film is at its audience-involving best during Hawke's dominant segment, and becomes rather wearisome in later reels as his importance is sidelined.

Similarly John Leguizamo commands the screen and steals most of his scenes as an ambiguous go-between character who transitions much of the action. Other standouts in small roles include a surprisingly serious Bill Pullman and sudden songstress (singing Bob Dylan no less) Milla Jovovich, cast against type as the evil step-mother queen. One of the weakest elements is Anton Yelchin as her crazy son, a role I didn't get into at all though he is a key element of the play.

So after an hour or so enjoying the intriguing upstate NYC locations and practical interior sets plus oddball elements (apt use of All Hallow's Ever/Halloween imagery throughout but silly American culture references like President Obama on TV), the final reel was quite poor, perhaps due as much to Shakespeare's intricate plotting devices as to the director's adaptation. Like plays or great novels of the period (see Fielding's TOM JONES) the disparate loose ends of the play come way too neatly together for the climax and resolution.

I guess the pernicious trend in cinema in the past couple of decades of the so-called Chaos Theory screenplays justifies this sort of dramatic nonsense (CRASH and BABEL come to mind) but the quickie payoffs of a convoluted storyline are unsatisfying to a contemporary (and thinking) audience, and easy outs that give one a "much ado about nothing" final response.

"A gritty story of a take-no-prisoners war between dirty cops and an outlaw biker gang. A drug kingpin is driven to desperate measures."

That's the IMDB description. What it leaves out, most deceptively, is that the entire dialogue is in Shakespearean verse. That's not a minor blemish. Tis' grievous in omission, and a foul disservice to both eye and ear.

Otherwise, it's a pretty, color-saturated film with more popular and respected actors than can almost be counted, but it feels flat and lifeless and so very, very poser in its essential affectations.

"I live in fear, though this Heavenly angel, Hell is here." Cymbeline (Harris) is the leader of a biker gang and the ruler of his family. His daughter Imogen (Johnson) is sought after and is loved by her family. When rivals attempt to seduce and steal Imogen away from her family and the one she loves things take a tragic turn. This leads Cymbeline on a quest for revenge. Going in I didn't realize this was a Shakespeare play. When I found that out I was nervous. I am not a big fan at all. I did like the Romeo & Juliet with DiCaprio and Coriolanus with Ralph Fiennes but other than that I have not really enjoyed the recent adaptations. This falls under that category. It could be because I'm not a fan and the whole movie is done in the old English but I found it very confusing to determine what was going on. Fans of Shakespeare will most likely not have this problem but as for me I was just too confused and uninterested to really pay attention to and get involved with. Overall, Shakespeare fans will get into this, I just could not. I give it a C+.

At least that's what the German distributor would like you to believe that is. What it is though, is a Shakespeare piece thrown into the modern world, but with the same dialogue you'll find in his books. So some words may seem inappropriate considering the time it plays, but that's up to the viewer to decide if he or she will fall for that.

The actors are decent actually and they know their Shakespeare. But that might not help the viewer actually enjoying this. It does seem amateurish at times too. And again not the actors fault. Having said that, I'm not sure "real" dialogue would have changed my perspective on the movie overall. The drama is there (it was in the book), but the delivery script and shooting wise lacks a lot ...