Imperator Ç’s review published on Letterboxd:
“If we should fail?”
“We fail!”
Torn between feeling this is a completely unjustified adaptation that comes just six years since the last major one, and acknowledging that the sole reason for its making is that now a barebones B&W counterpart exists for that elaborate explosion of color and red.
Even the B&W argument is debatable, it looks like an uninspired artistic choice that doesn’t enhance the original text in any way; on the other hand, save for some more contemporary flourishes, this emulates something old, trapped in a minimalistic Academy Ratio — maybe Coen was going for that, dunno…?
There’s no shortage of motives to watch and appreciate this Tragedy of Macbeth, even if it reeks of mould. For whatever it’s worth, there’s still a pulsing heart to this saga on blind greed, namely: Denzel giving it his all, in the only way a gentleman of his caliber ever could; and Frances, rejecting any call for chemistry whatsoever, burlesque and wide-eyed, playing the game the way no one else does, the way everyone should: as if they were dressed up two rags away from a porn parody.
