Summary 
Australian film modernizes the Scottish tragedy to the narcotics gangland of Melbourne, with a rock-star Macbeth assassinating the mob kingpin Duncan. Little Shakespearean tragedy - a paucity of nobility within drug-trafficking mobsters - and while the Jacobean language comes off as stylized and anachronistic, the tale still plays well as an entertaining action film. Colorful production design - the garishly decadent lives of a drug gang - and a powerful rock-tinged score enhance the blood-splattered violence and clever updating, with insights into the relationship between the pill-popping Macbeth and his beautiful but cocaine-addled Lady.
Design
Directed by Geoffrey Wright. 2006. 1:49.
Cast
Sam Worthington (Macbeth), Victoria Hill (Lady Macbeth), Gary Sweet (Duncan), Lachy Hulme (Macduff), Steve Bastoni (Banquo), Matt Doran (Malcolm), Kat Stewart (Lady Macduff), Craig Stott (Fleance).
Analysis
Geoffrey Wright modernizes Macbeth to 2006 Australia, re-envisioning the ambitious Macbeth as a hard-edged member of a drug mob. Wright films in a quickly cut style with vivid color and a throbbing rock-music soundtrack, showing the Aussie gang members - Macbeth, Macduff, Banquo, and a few others who seem unlikely to live long - on a boat at night in the Melbourne harbor as the city skyline lights reflect off the rippling water. They are approached on a bridge, with shades from The Warriors, by members of an Asian gang, the young men in pale white-face makeup, darkened fingernails, and black leather jackets, the giggling young women carrying big purses. Sam Worthington's passive Macbeth - young, lean and unshaven, with the hair and clothes of a rock star - senses a nearby elevator door opening and draws and fires, beginning a bloody shootout as the drug deal goes bad. The Asian girls raise their purses to fire automatic weapons concealed within them, shooting one Aussie in the forehead while another falls, his throat slit and spurting in an arterial spray. Worthington's Macbeth, not a fearsome thane defending the kingdom from traitors but a ruthless drug gang muscle averting a robbery attempt - kills the girls with a burst of machine gun fire, then stalks two others in slow motion with a pistol, fighting off a knife attack by killing the gang-banger with his own blade. When one of the Asian men escapes in a white vehicle, the Aussies pursue within a black SUV driven by Macduff, reloading their weapons in the red light of the car's interior. The shootout concludes in the alley behind the Cawdor nightclub, as Macbeth and Banquo take the traitorous owner captive. They pistol-whip Cawdor, and the black-bearded and ear-ringed Banquo tosses Macbeth a celebratory bottle of whisky from the nightclub bar. Wright's camera studies them as they sit in a booth with their bound and injured prisoner, smoking and drinking as Macbeth pops a pill and Banquo laughs, then pops several himself. The aloof Macduff, significantly, does not join their celebration.
Wright's gangland conception (he and wife Victoria Hill co-adapted the script as well as produced the film) works well on screen: the bloodied Cawdor kneels and recites the Lord's Prayer at the Cumberland, with its "exclusive penthouse lifestyle," before being executed from behind with a single silenced pistol shot to the back of the head. Wright cuts to grainy and greenish videotape as the mobsters' movements are monitored by stoic Australian narcotics detectives, and although the surveillance is superfluous, leading nowhere within the action of the film, the shots lend to the jittery hand-held camera authenticity and lurking paranoia of the cinematic style. The mobster boss Duncan, in long blond hair and beard but attired in business suit and tie with heavy overcoat, oversees the execution and proclaims ("Hail Malcolm!") his number two. Worthington's Macbeth remains silent and impassive, as he does for the most part throughout the film, but he twitches his neck and stalks off to his silver sports car - caught on video by the police, the time and date digitally on screen - his thoughts revealed in a narrated inner monologue. Wright and Hill provide an interesting twist on the relationship between Macbeth and his Lady as Worthington's frustrated Macbeth returns to their castle-like mansion pre-dawn, driving beyond a security gate and past a guard armed with a sub-machinegun. He shuts off a television and finds the long black-haired Lady in a bathtub upstairs, panicking when she appears unconscious or dead. Worthington's Macbeth caresses her face until she opens her eyes, and Wright cuts to them lying atop their bed. Victoria Hill's Lady is beautiful and elegant, but appears frigid and emotionally wounded, lying next to him in a red negligee but facing away, smoking a cigarette. Worthington's Macbeth tells her of Duncan's visit, stroking her to no response, then kissing her but still receiving no reaction. When he tries again to kiss her, Hill's Lady leans away, and Macbeth gets up and leaves.
In this new adaptation, the lack of intimacy between the Macbeths, as well as their vaulting ambition, prove to be the weaknesses the witches prey upon. Wright begins the film in creepy grayish light, showing three young girls in school uniforms - skirts, hats, and backpacks - desecrating a cemetery, laughing, running and hissing as they knock over and spray-paint headstones, then gouge out stone statues' eyes with a screwdriver. They gather as witches - "when shall we three meet again" - as dark clouds pass overhead and the title credits roll, pausing to leer with disturbing sexuality at Worthington's Macbeth as he stands at his son's grave. Worthington's Macbeth, in a plaid suit and open-necked white shirt, looks almost impatient while Hill's Lady Macbeth kneels and weeps, dropping white roses on the grave of her son. The sexuality of the young witches has heightened allure for Macbeth in light of his chilly relationship with his wife, and Wright emphasizes this temptation in the witches' subsequent appearances. In 1.3, the self-drugged Banquo lurches into an amber-lit mens' room to vomit into a toilet, and Worthington's victorious Macbeth staggers downstairs to the nightclub soundstage, hitting overhead disco lights and starting a creep of stage fog. He kneels within the surreal fog as spotlights swirl around him to a thumping dance beat, and he stares at a spinning disco ball as the witches speak: "fair is foul and foul is fair." The schoolgirl witches then appear as nightclub tramps in negligee-like club gear: torn fishnet stockings, lace gloves, and scarlet necklaces and chokers. Worthington's Macbeth, pointedly alone with Banquo indisposed, is aroused by the flirting witches, reaching for them and touching their hair, then trying to kiss them as Wright's camera circles in dusky red light. They deliver their prophesies in a hallucinatory spin, then one witch hisses and leaps upon Macbeth's back, before they scatter and flee as the music stops and the red lights fade.
Worthington's rock-star Macbeth, scowling and posed as if channeling Axl Rose of Guns 'n' Roses, provides the not-so-noble core for Wright's gangland Macbeth, and his character seems much more focused on pleasing his beautiful wife, her seduction of him entirely emotional. As the Lady, already wounded and tragic, Hill gives the best performance of the film, achingly realized: pained and dark-eyed, she lounges in her robe within a spacious scarlet living room, but snorts a long line of cocaine and chides her husband into regicide: "look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it." Hill's Lady, refined and outwardly gracious, then walks outside Dunsinane to greet her guests, moving through a moonlit mist as she eyes a child's empty chair on a chain twitching in the breeze from a swing set in eerie greenish-blue light. She then stares at the moon in a cloudy sky through the barren branches of a tree - Wright's images of loneliness and infertility almost poetically beautiful - her mean and ugly "unsex me here" speech a whispered interior monologue. Her smile belies her thoughts as she greets the arriving guests and is swept up in Duncan's embrace and spun around. Moments later, she notices her husband's brooding ("'tis well it were done quickly") and joins him - standing alone in contemplation within a brightly candle-lit room, holding his hand over one of the flames - before dancing with the targeted Duncan.
Wright wisely marks the 2.2 turning point of Macbeth with the end of the celebration and the assassination of Duncan, depicted on camera and with close-up brutality. Hill's Lady crushes sleeping pills into a wine decanter for Duncan's guards, her inner monologue a feverish whisper, as if she has found a worthy purpose. Worthington's Macbeth checks with her before rising, then closes his eyes - "bring forth men children only" - and stomps off to the guest house where Duncan sleeps, pausing to notice the shadow of a plant cast across Duncan's stucco wall that looks eerily similar to a proffered knife handle. He steps closer, within his own monologue - "I see thee still" - and Wright's film becomes something of a slasher movie: amid rising rock music, Worthington's Macbeth crosses the threshold and seizes the drugged guards' big hunting knives, then slips past an animal head hung from the wall, and to a crooked camera angle, enters Duncan's chamber. Duncan awakes, face to face with Macbeth at the point of no return, and Wright hammers the significance home: Worthington's Macbeth viciously stabs Duncan repeatedly in the belly, and he continues even after the King has ceased struggling, then leans in close for more frenzied stabbing, again and again, Wright's camera twisting to reveal Duncan's bloodied hand and Macbeth's blood-spattered face. Worthington's Macbeth falls into a shell-shocked state of horror and disbelief - much like the Lady later - then reacts angrily to the knocking at the gate ("every noise appalls me!") and muttering in self-loathing: "wake Duncan with thy knocking." Wright rapidly develops the unrest and uncertainty within the gang leadership: the big-side-burned Malcolm seems suspicious of Macbeth from the start, sending his blonde girlfriend - "there's daggers in men's smiles" - in her coat past Macbeth and Seyton to secretly open the driveway security gate for their escape; and at the Macbeth coronation celebration, amid all the kisses and handshaking and offering of toasts, Banquo somberly returns his untasted cocktail to a serving tray and rubs his jaw.
Worthington's Macbeth and Hill's Lady receive congratulations like award-accepting rock stars, he in a multi-colored satin suit, she gorgeous in gold-trimmed black. Hill's Lady notices her husband's distraction with Banquo and embraces him from behind - her only show of physical affection in the entire film - but Worthington's Macbeth mumbles about "a fruitless crown" and spits in close-up about the murder "to make them kings" before lapsing into another internal monologue. Wright cleverly depicts how the Macbeth world collapses into increasing violence: Banquo and Fleance "go riding" 3.3 - in Wright's vision upon motorbikes across trails in the Melbourne woods - and are surprised, Banquo viciously unseated with a baseball bat, then beaten and stabbed, his ear-ring removed as a keepsake; and the fled Macduff's wife and son have dessert with a family friend, the boy carrying a basketball and stealing bites of cake, before they are assaulted, the boy shot three times at close range and the wife graphically garroted. The Macbeths watch an evening newscast that describes the murders in the modern art-deco Macduff home, Worthington's Macbeth stoic with a tumbler of whisky, Hill's Lady in a pony-tail, curled up with tears in her eyes and horror in her expression.
Lachy Hulme's bearded Macduff is the closest approximation to a heroic character in Wright's bloody underworld conception of Macbeth. Wright cuts to the Macduff bedroom 4:30am on the night of Duncan's murder, showing the family man securing a knife to his boot then lovingly kissing his wife goodbye. Macduff checks on his son asleep in a bedroom, looks at a boyish picture taped to the wall, and takes the artwork with him. Hulme's Macduff, like Macbeth, later reveals a ruthless side, more befitting a drug-gang warlord than a noble hero. He confronts the murderers of his family in the woods near Dunsinane, and the two men kneel and lock hands as Macduff - captured from a low angle in murky twilight - moves behind them. Instead of an execution-style shot to the back of the head, Macduff shoots each man in the leg to knock them down, and as they squirm in pain, walks patiently around to shoot each one three more times. When an observer is discovered in the woods, Macduff's men capture him and slit his throat.
Worthington's 3.5 banquet is the first of a series of effective moments, underplayed with a delicate balance of unsmiling stoicism in the face of approaching doom. His Macbeth greets his guests ("hearty welcome!") before showing quivering anger at the news Fleance has escaped. When he seats himself at the head of the table near an ornate mirror, he sees Banquo's naked form behind him, threatening, but when Macbeth looks, no one is there. They resume the feast, but when Worthington's Macbeth again sees Banquo in the mirror, he spits out his food in panic, and as Banquo mocks him and the confused guests murmur ("our lord is not well"), Wright switches to the jerky movements of a hand-held camera, the motion befitting Macbeth's teetering sanity. Worthington's rattled Macbeth seeks Banquo within the room and offers a nervous toast to him, and in the best of horror-movie moments, finds Banquo's stolen ear-ring just as Banquo suddenly appears behind him - if only his image within the mirror - and begins strangling him with a wire. Macbeth cries out and struggles, flinging his wine goblet, and the guests stand in shock because he jerks and spasms and fights, but no opponent is visible. His expressions of fear are more palpably effective due to the normally stoic's Macbeth usually unexpressive demeanor. When he awakes 4.1, shirtless beside Hill's Lady, he glimpses a naked witch scurry past his bedroom door, and he eagerly pursues her down a shadowy hallway. Worthington's Macbeth discovers all three witches standing completely naked in the white florescent glare around his kitchen island, brewing a grisly concoction in a stovetop cauldron - "double, double, toil and trouble" - adding squirming worms, bloody eyeballs, and gory hunks of flesh. After each sexy young witch takes a taste from a copper pot, Macbeth joins them, but he doubles over and gags, and they each kiss him in turn, then scratch him with their nails. To a thumping club beat, one jumps upon him from behind and they stagger into a room lit with hundreds of tiny candles for a surreal orgy sequence filled with blurred images, flashing flesh, and biting and scratching, as the witches take animalistic turns atop him sexually, Wright's camera tilting violently from side to side. The new prophesies - Birnam wood, no man of woman born - are cried out in moments of sexual passion, and the final fatal vision comes as Macbeth hallucinates a gathering of gangsters around the pool table across from him - led by the taunting image of a King Fleance - "hail!" - who then pulls a pistol to shoot Macbeth in the head.
Hill's unhinged Lady, her eyes wild and her hair flying, sleepwalks 5.1 to a water basin - "out damn'd spot!" - pleading with her Nurse in a chillingly frantic panic. Naked except for panties, she flails in guilty hysteria and must be subdued and injected with a sedative before she lapses into eerily silent calm. Worthington's Macbeth saunters within the room, brandishing a cocktail and wearing jeweled sunglasses, seeming aloof - "how's your patient, doctor?" - but when they subsequently discover the Lady within a bloody bathtub with her wrists slit open, Worthington's Macbeth leans backward against the tile wall with a high-pitched intake of breath like a sobbing gasp that is just a small show of emotion but the character's most effectively poignant moment. He then steels himself - "she should have died hereafter" - swilling from a whisky bottle, checking his security cameras, and mumbling condemnation of his deserting allies: "let them fly off."
Wright orchestrates the concluding bloodbath gunfight with ingenuity: within twilight fog, Malcolm's army gathers, led by Macduff, arming themselves with automatic weapons and boxes of ammunition from the back of a station wagon. Under a full moon obscured by passing clouds, the army boards lumber company trucks - Birnam Timber metaphorically come to Dunsinane - that crash through Macbeth's security gate at high speed and spark a machine gun battle amid smoke flares and searching red laser sights. Worthington's Macbeth, now echoing Pacino in Scarface as he opens a wall safe for bigger weapons and more ammunition, seems to edge into insanity as he dons a black leather kilt, swigs from a bottle, and dances a lurching Scottish jig.
Wright's final showdown is a slow motion gun battle, akin to a roaring heavy-metal video, with Malcolm and Macduff storming the mansion as soldiers are shot over tables and riddled against bookcases. Worthington's Macbeth fires back but is hemmed in by the laser sights in the cellar, shouting his defiance as the music halts and normal speed resumes with Macduff's 5.8 face-off against him. Their brutal and close-up hand-to-hand combat concludes with Macbeth railing that he leads "a charmed life" but jerking with surprise as Macduff stabs him in the belly with a knife. The goth-rock Fleance, something of a young prince-in-waiting, shows Macduff-like slippage into violence when he casually kills the Lady's innocent Nurse with a shockingly loud pistol shot. Macduff himself disarms the boy, gently taking away the handgun. Fleance, interestingly detailed - he sneaks a drink of wine at the Macbeth party for Duncan, steals glances at Malcolm and his girlfriend making out in the hallway, and stows away on one of the Birnam Timber trucks - is led off by Macduff into the rolling fog, lit white outside in the darkness, as Worthington's Macbeth collapses on his bed next to his dead Lady. He kisses her tenderly and dies next to her like Romeo or Othello (thus with a kiss), his voice narrating somberly, "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," until the credits roll backward down the screen. Wright's bloody gangland vision of Macbeth, while certainly lacking nobility of character and a sense of high ambition gone awry, nonetheless presents a compellingly modern action-movie stylization of the great tragedy.