Highly Overrated But Still Good

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich,John Leguizamo and Dakota Johnson star in this story based on the play by William Shakespeare of the same title that had its New York setting at present day modern times entitled Cymbeline.This Shakespearean film directed by Michael Almereyda takes us to a story of an on-going war between corrupt dirty cops and drug-dealing biker gang.Things become more violent when the drug kingpin becomes determined to take desperate measures.Well,Shakespearean plot does exist in the movie.When King Cymbelinew,who heads the Briton motorcycle gang in a decaying town,decides to resist Roman tax,with police official Caius Lucius the chief collector.On the romantic front,Cymbeline's protégé is Posthumus,a handsome but penniless skateboarder is the secret love of Cymbeline's daughter Imogen.Unfortunately,his second wife the Queen is pursuing a match between Imogen and her son Cloten instead. Then the main villain Iachimo enters.He shows up in town and thinks that Posthumus can deflower Imogen in just one meeting.Posthumus thinks is easy money but Iachime takes of a sleeping Imogen and sends him into extreme rage.One of the gang members Pisanio,a kind thug,is tasked with the task of Imogen's murder.But the truth is that Imogen was assisted to fake her death and to escape town disguised as a man.Later,she stumbles into Belarius and his sons,who happen to be the kidnapped sons of Cymbeline.Then things get complicated as the story progresses.As the plot is being retold,we get to see lots of confusion in the movie.Obviously,the viewers will have a hard time to keep track of the plot unless they are familiar with the Shakespearean play.Also,the modern retelling of the story seemed out of place especially in today's world considering that the screenplay made very little difference in telling the story.It is rather unfortunate that the director possesses a talent cast in this movie but these actors and actresses have a muddled screenplay to deal with and could not save it from being a bad movie.

before I finally shut it off. There art nay words to pray pardon me how awful this movie is. For the most part I thought it was a joke, or that something was going to happen and it would turn into a real movie eventually. I came here before renting and the summary seemed pretty decent, and the cast looks amazing! The IMDb summary is completely misleading having never heard of this movie before (and now I know why I hadn't). I'm a little upset I paid 4 bucks to rent this. That's 4 dollars and 45 minutes I can't get back. And I'm more upset about the 45 minutes. The summary NEEDS to say something about it being an attempt to modernize a Shakespeare...something - or whatever it was attempting to do. I seriously have never seen anything so horrible in my life - I find it near incomprehensible why anyone would even mildly consider producing something like this. I feel like I should cry a little bit over all the time and money wasted on this mess.

Although most of the lines in the play are missing, I didn't have much trouble following the plot and characters. There are a lot of characters, but thankfully most of the actors' faces can't be confused with one another. I would have liked to have more dialog retained from the developing confrontation between Clotus and Guiderius, because it seems to become violent for insufficient reason. Overall, though, I think that the dialog works well because it isn't recited in a stentorian style. Everyone is rather quiet, even when making terrible threats, and I think the quietness is what saves the language from incongruity in the modern setting. On the other hand, after a while there seems to be a bit too much quiet, a lack of excitement. If the excitement won't come from the drama of Shakespeare's language, where can it come from? The movie refrains from digressing into manic action sequences, nude scenes, stunt- heavy car chases, or dance numbers, and that's fine, but it doesn't grip us with the characterizations either and so I'm afraid it remains a neatly accomplished intellectual exercise.

"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. http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/