A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Shakespeare's rather rarely performed history plays about late medieval English history.The first series is about three kings, the first of which is a looney-tune who can't do anything right, which is a bad thing in a king, so he very quickly ends up very dead. The second king is more OK, but he can't get anything important done because people keep trying to take him out, while his son wastes all his time boozing it up in this dive saloon with this bunch of Animal House type guys, one of whom, Fat Jack, is a real riot. The third king is this same son who decides that now that he is king he should get serious so he decides to conquer France, apparently not understanding that even if he conquers it, it will just get conquered back again.The second series is basically about this long gang war between two families, the North White Flowers and the West Blood Roses. Things get complicated because, on the one hand, the Flowers' capo is a heavy dude, while the Roses' boss is mental, but on the other hand, the Roses' boss's moll, French Maggie, is heavier than any dude around. In the end the last man standing is a Flower, Crooked Dick, but he don't stand for long.Great cast, great settings, great poetry. Extremely violent and bloody: think Game of Thrones without the skin. Check it out.

If you base a movie/TV series on a play don't make this. Entertaining maybe, not even close to Shakespeare unless you watch WB or have a deadline. You can't skip the important dialogue for sweeping sequences. It is a stage play which can end in 2 hours. Sorry to consumers, this ain't Shakespeare. If you are stealing work, steal it all. I am pretty sure it is out of copyright. more lines... if you never read a book in your life you will recognize themes, they are from Shakespeare whether he actually wrote it or not. do I have enough lines yet not yet now?... quick list of better things: Richard III ian mckellan, romeo and Juliet leo, henry v brannagh, best ever titus bigelows with Hopkins... way more out there

I'm not that deeply into Shakespeare, but I will watch the Bard's historical plays and tragedies once in a while if I'm in the mood. (The comedies don't do much for me). I'm the kind of fan who goes to "Shakespeare In The Park" events. But I once bought a used copy of Ian McKellen's WW II version of "Richard III" and thought it was great. And I enjoyed "Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and Branaugh's "Henry V" when they came out as movies. So for what it's worth, I found a lot to like here and was very glad I got a chance to see these adaptations. Shakespeare experts and fanatics may find some fault with this collection and some of the casting choices. But if all you want is to get "up to speed" with a few of his historical dramas and see some pretty good acting and story telling, well, here ya go.Looking forward to the 2nd collection.

Hugely acclaimed on their release, I have only just got around to watching this tetralogy of films based on the plays by William Shakespeare - and they're rubbish. The biggest problem is the casting: Ben Whishaw plays Richard II as a laughably fey figure, whilst Tom Hiddleston as (the future) Henry V is too introverted and skinny to convince as either a daredevil wastrel (Henry IV Parts 1 & 2) or a mighty warrior king (Henry V). These central failures destroy much of the fine work done by the other actors (Patrick Stewart, Simon Russell-Beale etcetera). This is compounded by the lousy direction, which is flat and lifeless. The locations are wasted and used largely as mere backgrounds (barring the near-blasphemous linking of the dead Richard II and Jesus Christ through a slow shot of a life-size wooden crucifix). Whilst I don't mind the prose delivery of Shakespeare's verse, the way in which it is done is terrible; the actors are left to speechify to an unmoving camera, without any of the movement or visual flow necessary to successfully adapt from the stage to screen. The choice of setting is also odd, with the production trying for a pseudo-historical look but getting the costumes all wrong (rubber fantasy armour, Darth Vader helmets, and turbans!) and persisting with the official policy of colour-blind casting (which is sure to mislead some people) despite its ludicrous incongruity in this context. Much of the budget appears to have been wasted on sub-"Saving Private Ryan" battles, leaving Tom Hiddleston to give (his rather weedy version of) the Crispin's Day Speech to about five people, all of whom are aristocrats (thereby undermining the whole point of the speech). Symptomatic of the whole farrago is that Larry Olivier's 70-year old version of "Henry V" is better acted, more historically accurate, more inventively staged and better directed - so you're better off watching that instead!