Cymbeline

"On her left breast, a mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' the bottom of a cowslip."

It's been over 14 years since Director Michael Almereyda and Ethan Hawke collaborated together in the modern day adaptation of William Shakespeare's classical play, Hamlet. The film was warmly received by critics despite not being the first time that a Shakespeare play was adapted to modern times without changing the original dialogue (Baz Luhrmann did the same with Romeo + Juliet in 1996). Once again Almereyda decides to leave the dialogue untouched and change the setting to modern times for the adaptation of Cymbeline. The King (Ed Harris) of a biker gangster group known as Britain is upset that his daughter, Imogen (Dakota Johnson) has fallen in love with his protégé, Posthumous (Penn Badgley), who she secretly married. The two have sworn eternal love to each other, but the King's second wife, the Queen (Milla Jovovich), has other plans for Imogen. She wants her to marry his son, Cloten (Anton Yeltsin) so they banish Posthumous from their group. Meanwhile the bikers have decided to stop paying tribute to the Roman Police Department and a war is about to breakout between the two groups. Posthumous has fled to his friend's house where he ends up meeting Iachimo (Ethan Hawke) and tells him all about his lover's chastity. Iachimo makes a bet with him claiming that he can seduce her and prove that she's not as pure as he believes her to be. He meets Imogen and is unsuccessful in his approach, but Iachimo fools Posthumous into thinking he did sleep with his lover and that is where the plot begins to take several unexpected twists.

If the short synopsis of this film felt a bit convoluted, it's because the film actually has a lot going on in the opening minutes where it's trying to introduce the main characters in a very rushed way. The dialogue doesn't help either if you're not familiar with Shakespeare's play because the delivery is extremely fast and new characters keep on coming from all over the place. It's strange that I'm complaining about how fast everything comes at you, because the pacing does get quite tedious and I was thankful the film only runs a bit past the 95 minute mark. But that doesn't mean that the adaptation isn't a mess because it's all over the place. One of the reasons why this adaptation didn't work for me is that the tragicomedy plays out as pure tragedy here and the comedy element is missing from the film. There was no time to get to know any of the characters or their true intentions and it seemed the entire purpose of this film was being able to adapt the play in a modern setting without touching the dialogue. Something that Whedon accomplished much better in Much Ado About Nothing because he focused on the comedy more than on the action. It's funny that I say this because I wasn't even a fan of Whedon's adaptation although I recognized its artistic value, but here there's nothing that worked for me.

Shakespeare's plays might be timeless, but that doesn't mean that all of them can be adapted to film. Cymbeline seems to be one of those plays that don't translate well to the big screen due to the convoluted plot. The performances in this film aren't bad, and I like most of the actors here, but the problem for me was that the adaptation didn't work at all. Not even John Leguizamo can redeem the film despite how well he's played Shakespearean characters in the past (Romeo + Juliet). Ed Harris and Ethan Hawke are both extremely talented actors, but there was nothing they could do to engage me with the film. I love Shakespeare's plays and despite never having read this one, I still could see some of his trademarks in the characters and writing, but unfortunately I didn't care for them in this adaptation.

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Michael Almereyda once again stuffs a Shakespearean play into modern day society and comes up with an incomprehensible mess. His film of "Hamlet" at least used as its framework an enduring masterpiece with themes as relevant to today's world as when it was written. But "Cymbeline" is an obscure, rarely produced oddity from Shakespeare's canon which employs unlikely plotting centered on obsolete sexual morality which has no relevance to today's world. Why Almereyda thought this archaic chestnut needed to be set in the present day is baffling.

It is up to the actors to inject some life into this dull mess and for the most part, they are not up to the task. Dakota Johnson is stunning to look at as the ill-used Imogen, but gives a one-note performance that is insufferable to watch. Ethan Hawke brings to the evil Iachimo the same dull monotone that he employed as Almereyda's Hamlet. And Penn Badgley makes the gullible Posthumus seem like a refugee from a boy band. Only Delroy Lindo and Ed Harris project the charisma necessary to make their characters interesting, although demoting Harris' Cymbeline from the King of Britain in the original text to the head of a motorcycle gang is unimaginably reductive.

Almereyda seems to have a fetish for updating Shakespearean drama into the modern world and has no issue with pummeling it into a different shape to fit his concept no matter what the Bard's original intention was while writing it. The approach worked intermittently with "Hamlet" but fails completely with "Cymbeline." Almereyda would be well advised to seek out contemporary stories to make films of and leave Shakespeare alone.

This film is a modern plus classical hybrid of the Shakespearean play, Cymbeline.

After watching just a few minutes, I already wished I didn't choose this film. It's an interesting idea to put new modern scenes onto Shakespearean dialogue, but it doesn't work at all. Shakespeare fans will be appalled by the millions of anachronisms in the film, while everyone else will be put off by the archaic dialogue. A similar endeavour, "Titus" starring Anthony Hopkins already demonstrated that this hybrid doesn't work, so it's quite unfortunate that the filmmakers attempt it again. I really wonder why so many famous actors agreed to star in it. One more thing, I like Dakota Johnson in "Fifty Shades of Grey", but in this film her forehead is so overly botoxed that she could not even muster a single wrinkle even when faced with much distress. Even Milla Jovovich managed some!

I watched " Cymbeline" until the end, and trust me it did not get any better. If you don't like the first scene, then switch it off right away.

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.