Coriolano

Exciting, ironic, with assured direction, accomplished performances and the tension of topical themes, this is Shakespeare as relevant as you like it.

Fiennes has exercised commendable restraint, allowing others to shine too. He can congratulate himself that his first film as a director is a fine achievement.

Fiennes’ Coriolanus is brutal and bleak, cynical about politics, wary of war, and unable to offer alternatives to either.

Immensely entertaining, 'Coriolanus' is chock-full o' gore and the contemporary trappings of a man and a land divided, both from without and from within.

Ralph Fiennes’ impressive if very macho foray into filmed Shakespeare is set in a grey, modern-day Europe reminiscent of the former Yugoslavia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.