RICHARD III: REVIEW

It's not supposed to be like this.

I, who, when not being a huge nerd, am a drama snob; should be telling you to go out and Netflix this gem of a forgotten film RIGHT NOW. That's at least what my memory was telling me would happen when I Netflixed Ian McKellan's RICHARD III. After all, I studied it in my Shakespeare on Film class, and had fond memories. I love Ian McKellan. I love Richard III, the play. I love the idea of re-setting in a post WWII quasi-facist Britan. I love Jim Broadbent. I love Robert Downey, Jr. I'm neutral-postive on Annette Benning. And a tank going through a wall is, believe it or not, a great way to start an adaptation of the play.

This is the part where I tell you to run out and Netflix it. This is that not actually happening, because aside from Sir Ian himself, this movie is a glorious concept poorly filmed, unevenly acted and questionably cut.

Oh, it all starts well enough. A tank goes through a wall, a crippled man in a gas mask shoots helpless prisoners and rips of his mask it's- gasp- Ian McKellan! We then saunter into a grand party for the new king, which handily introduces all the characters while showing Richard III to be part of the world but outside it. Then he starts the famous opening monologue- the one about a winter of being pissed off- and the movie pulls off a small masterstroke, by having him deliver the first half as a laudatory speech and the second half to the audience in a urinal. Nice.

This set-up proves to be a tough act to follow, as after the party the pace slows and one gets distracted from the action. I found myself on facebook instead of in the movie. This is strange, as the play begins to pile up the bodies almost immediately, which is a useful dramatic tool. But save for the murder of George (and even that suffers from cuts), most of what we get is a series of unfortunate events to people we don't care much about, and Richard III grinning all the way.

Sir Ian pulls his weight: he sneers, he lords over his underlings, he delivers asides to the camera and seems to be having the time of his life. The rest of the cast looks adrift. Annette Benning has convinced me of many things over the years, but she could not convince me here that she knew the meaning of her lines. Robert Downey Jr. is in the movie too briefly to make much of an impression (of all the parts they could have given him, they give him Rivers? Really?) Jim Broadbent hits very broad notes as Buckingham, and while Lady Anne is a difficult role, and Kristen Scott Thomas is more than up to the task of handling the language, the movie torpedoes her with some strange choices. After playing the "Seduction over the corpse" scene fairly straight, they decided to have her show up at a fancy dinner, smiling at Richard III's jokes and smirking at his foes. It's a compete 180 that's not followed up on later, and complicates her character for no reason. She also is a drug addict in this version.

Maybe the problem was me. I know many of these scenes well, and while I am no prude when it comes to trimming Shakespeare, what we're left with is a lot of flavorless murders. The strange request by Richard for strawberries before he kills Hastings? Gone. The pleading from George that almost changes the murderer's minds? Gone. The moment where Buckingham observes that it's all Saint's Day, before he is murdered? Gone. And perhaps most crucially, Queen Margaret's cackling rant that warns them all of the impending doom? Gone. This last one is the greatest sin, because they went to the trouble to cast the impossibly great Maggie Smith, and then forgot to give her anything to do.

But I suspect most of the problem lies with the director, Richard Loncraine, who may know how to direct Ian McKellen but has proven himself incapble of delivering a movie. (His post RICHARD III adventures include WIMBELDON and FIREWALL.) You get the a strong sense of what he tried to do, without actually getting the end result. This Britan does not feel real, it feels desgined and filmed. The actors in stylish costumes reciting Shakespeare look like actors in stylish costumes reciting Shakespeare; which is fine unless you want people to actually understand and give a damn about what's going on. Richard III is not a meek play or character, if ever there was an excuse to grab the camera and throttle it, it's this material. And yet it feels almost stately, like the Kenneth Braugnah Shakespeare comedies, but without the fun.

The last scenes involve a helter-skelter civil war between Richard and Richmond. It is a troubling sign that one cannot follow the action, or care much about the result. It is a worse sign when you compare the battle to the infinitely better and smaller documentary Looking for Richard, which cross cut Al Pacino as Richard fighting 3 extras with Al Pacino's producer bitching about production costs; and choose the documentary. That's right- for all of this movie's explosions, a documentary about the filming of a play had a more exciting conclusion.

The movie's design and costumes are fantastic. There are six or seven good moments/well delivered lines. If you watch the trailer, you can see all of these moments, and the costumes. Lord knows that's how they got me into the theater in high school, and got me excited for class in college. Hell, I watched the trailer before I rewatched the movie, to get excited again. But the trailer's the best part of the movie, if only because it conjurers up a promise that the movie never delivers.

In short, if you want to watch Ian McKellen gallivant about, by all means. Otherwise, this is a movie for no one. Purists will hate the changes and the performances, casual viewers will be bored and the material remains obtuse and hard to engage for the "oh god, not shakespeare" crowd. It may be small news to tell you that I Netflixed a movie not worth watching (I could tell you the same of INKHEART) but to tell you the same news about what I thought was a great Shakespeare adaptation is, as the bard would say, a bummer.

RATING: * * Stars (Out of 5)

P.S. I never thought I would say this about any role Jim Broadbent has played, but after seeing his interpretation of Buckingham up against Kevin Spacey in LOOKING FOR RICHARD, I prefer the non Jim Broadbent version.

P.P.S. Of all the additions they made to the script, the worst is Stanley's nightmare where he imagines Richard's face being replaced with that of a wild hog. However, it's interesting that of all the fantasy/sci fi/comic book movies Ian McKellan has been in, it's the shakespeare movie that has him wearing a latex face with gross fangs.


Doesn't that picture look awesome? Doesn't make you want to see this movie? Well, don't.