(SPOILERS AHOY!!! Inasmuch as one can "spoil" one of the most famous plots in literature.)
Everything you have heard about this movie is wrong.
There was nothing wrong with the idea of setting RICHARD III in a 20th-century Fascist state; while I have never seen much good in moving Shakespeare's plays out of the setting for which they were written, it can be done without actually harming the story. Branagh has done it twice, with outstanding results in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and reasonably good results in HAMLET; Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise also did it with WEST SIDE STORY. And Richard's Machiavellian maneuvers should have lent themselves well to a Fascist backdrop.
But if you insists on moving Shakespeare out of his element, you must at least be true to the new setting you have moved him to. And it is instantly obvious that the setting of this RICHARD III is not 1930's Britain, or any other Britain that ever existed. Loncraine's crime was not so much that he updated Shakespeare but that he didn't update Shakespeare enough. You cannot keep dialogue that states that Clarence is being taken to the Tower of London, and then show him being imprisoned in what is obviously not the Tower. Richard is shown accusing his enemies of witchcraft; this made perfect sense in Shakespeare's time, but to hear it out of the mouth of a 1930's fascist dictator is ludicrous. Possibly most bizarre is to see Richard's British tanks as they lumber off to the battlefield, clearly painted with the red star of the Soviet Union!
Nevertheless, RICHARD III could still have been a good movie, but for several other miscues. The shavings from the plot twist the tale into a stupid mess. In the play, Richard's evil springs in large part from his inability to experience romantic love. Here, he so easily and expertly seduces Anne (Kristen Scott Thomas) that his initial complaints that he "cannot prove a lover" are impossible to believe. Loncraine and McKellen have deleted the reference to the prophecy that "G" (George of Clarence) will kill Edward's heirs, so Edward's orders to imprison Clarence make no sense. Then Edward signs a pardon which will spare Clarence from the death penalty. Richard intercepts the pardon and burns it to a crisp. This makes Tyrell's mission to murder Clarence a useless and stupid risk, since in the absence of the pardon Clarence would have been executed by royal order anyway.
Much has been made of Rivers' death scene, where an unknown assassin stabs him through his mattress as he cavorts with his lover. This is, firstly, the most ridiculous way to kill someone ever devised (suppose your target rolls over, or the lady gets underneath him?). Secondly, the scene is stolen directly from FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (and don't even think of using the words "homage" and "FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH" in the same sentence). If Loncraine must steal, one would think he would at least steal from *good* movies. Less derivative, but just as stupid, is the murder scene of the young prince Richard, where Tyrell smothers the unfortunate boy with a red silk handkerchief. I kid you not.
Reports of the acting have been greatly exaggerated. Ian McKellen, who is capable of much better than this, is shockingly hammy as Richard. He has two notes: gloating evil, and thinly disguised gloating evil. Not the slightest bit of motivation or depth of character have survived from the play. Equally hammy is Annette Bening as Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Robert Downey Jr. as Rivers is more acceptable only because all the lines he is given call for extreme emotion. We do get some pretty good supporting performances: Maggie Smith is imperious as Richard's mother, and Jim Broadbent is perfect as Buckingham. Nigel Hawthorne's Clarence is convincingly mild-mannered and good-tempered; you know from the start that such a genuinely likable man hasn't got a chance against Richard, although he seems rather incongruous when one remembers what an arrogant, treacherous bully the historical Clarence was. While John Wood's role as Edward is thankless, he is perfectly cast and made-up to resemble McKellen. However, Dominic West's Richmond and Kate Steavenson-Pane's Princess Elizabeth are mere ciphers, and their romance is the most anemic ever to be filmed in soft yellow light.
The ending of this film is pure farce, containing one of the worst staged "battles" I have ever seen, where Richard's HQ, apparently undefended by any sentries, is attacked by complete surprise, soldiers crawl away from cover rather than toward it, men try to destroy buttoned-up tanks with machine gun fire . . . oh, forget it, I can't convey how stupid this scene is. And amazingly, Loncraine comes up with a final moment even dumber and more cliche than Shakespeare's. After duly following the ancient movie rule that the bad guy must always climb the highest structure in sight when the movie is nearing its end, Richard deliberately throws himself into a pile of burning rubbish, with an inane Al Jolson song playing in the background just to underscore how completely anticlimactic this whole affair has been. Hmmm, Ian McKellen throwing himself into a pile of flaming rubbish; isn't that a perfect metaphor for this entire movie?
It is telling that so many of the lovers of RICHARD III are detractors of Branagh. Almost all Shakespeare directors today (emphatically including Loncraine) seem determined to see how far they can substitute their own story for the Bard's original story; whether the new story is any good is completely irrelevant, so long as it is the director's story and not Shakespeare's. Branagh, by contrast, is concerned chiefly with using every technique in his power to enhance and vivify the original story, to make it everything it can be, rather than replace it with something else. Alone among modern Shakespeare directors, Branagh is not trying to hog the stage from the original author. And yet it's Branagh who is accused of egotism. Go figure.
Everything you have heard about this movie is wrong.
There was nothing wrong with the idea of setting RICHARD III in a 20th-century Fascist state; while I have never seen much good in moving Shakespeare's plays out of the setting for which they were written, it can be done without actually harming the story. Branagh has done it twice, with outstanding results in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and reasonably good results in HAMLET; Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise also did it with WEST SIDE STORY. And Richard's Machiavellian maneuvers should have lent themselves well to a Fascist backdrop.
But if you insists on moving Shakespeare out of his element, you must at least be true to the new setting you have moved him to. And it is instantly obvious that the setting of this RICHARD III is not 1930's Britain, or any other Britain that ever existed. Loncraine's crime was not so much that he updated Shakespeare but that he didn't update Shakespeare enough. You cannot keep dialogue that states that Clarence is being taken to the Tower of London, and then show him being imprisoned in what is obviously not the Tower. Richard is shown accusing his enemies of witchcraft; this made perfect sense in Shakespeare's time, but to hear it out of the mouth of a 1930's fascist dictator is ludicrous. Possibly most bizarre is to see Richard's British tanks as they lumber off to the battlefield, clearly painted with the red star of the Soviet Union!
Nevertheless, RICHARD III could still have been a good movie, but for several other miscues. The shavings from the plot twist the tale into a stupid mess. In the play, Richard's evil springs in large part from his inability to experience romantic love. Here, he so easily and expertly seduces Anne (Kristen Scott Thomas) that his initial complaints that he "cannot prove a lover" are impossible to believe. Loncraine and McKellen have deleted the reference to the prophecy that "G" (George of Clarence) will kill Edward's heirs, so Edward's orders to imprison Clarence make no sense. Then Edward signs a pardon which will spare Clarence from the death penalty. Richard intercepts the pardon and burns it to a crisp. This makes Tyrell's mission to murder Clarence a useless and stupid risk, since in the absence of the pardon Clarence would have been executed by royal order anyway.
Much has been made of Rivers' death scene, where an unknown assassin stabs him through his mattress as he cavorts with his lover. This is, firstly, the most ridiculous way to kill someone ever devised (suppose your target rolls over, or the lady gets underneath him?). Secondly, the scene is stolen directly from FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (and don't even think of using the words "homage" and "FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH" in the same sentence). If Loncraine must steal, one would think he would at least steal from *good* movies. Less derivative, but just as stupid, is the murder scene of the young prince Richard, where Tyrell smothers the unfortunate boy with a red silk handkerchief. I kid you not.
Reports of the acting have been greatly exaggerated. Ian McKellen, who is capable of much better than this, is shockingly hammy as Richard. He has two notes: gloating evil, and thinly disguised gloating evil. Not the slightest bit of motivation or depth of character have survived from the play. Equally hammy is Annette Bening as Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Robert Downey Jr. as Rivers is more acceptable only because all the lines he is given call for extreme emotion. We do get some pretty good supporting performances: Maggie Smith is imperious as Richard's mother, and Jim Broadbent is perfect as Buckingham. Nigel Hawthorne's Clarence is convincingly mild-mannered and good-tempered; you know from the start that such a genuinely likable man hasn't got a chance against Richard, although he seems rather incongruous when one remembers what an arrogant, treacherous bully the historical Clarence was. While John Wood's role as Edward is thankless, he is perfectly cast and made-up to resemble McKellen. However, Dominic West's Richmond and Kate Steavenson-Pane's Princess Elizabeth are mere ciphers, and their romance is the most anemic ever to be filmed in soft yellow light.
The ending of this film is pure farce, containing one of the worst staged "battles" I have ever seen, where Richard's HQ, apparently undefended by any sentries, is attacked by complete surprise, soldiers crawl away from cover rather than toward it, men try to destroy buttoned-up tanks with machine gun fire . . . oh, forget it, I can't convey how stupid this scene is. And amazingly, Loncraine comes up with a final moment even dumber and more cliche than Shakespeare's. After duly following the ancient movie rule that the bad guy must always climb the highest structure in sight when the movie is nearing its end, Richard deliberately throws himself into a pile of burning rubbish, with an inane Al Jolson song playing in the background just to underscore how completely anticlimactic this whole affair has been. Hmmm, Ian McKellen throwing himself into a pile of flaming rubbish; isn't that a perfect metaphor for this entire movie?
It is telling that so many of the lovers of RICHARD III are detractors of Branagh. Almost all Shakespeare directors today (emphatically including Loncraine) seem determined to see how far they can substitute their own story for the Bard's original story; whether the new story is any good is completely irrelevant, so long as it is the director's story and not Shakespeare's. Branagh, by contrast, is concerned chiefly with using every technique in his power to enhance and vivify the original story, to make it everything it can be, rather than replace it with something else. Alone among modern Shakespeare directors, Branagh is not trying to hog the stage from the original author. And yet it's Branagh who is accused of egotism. Go figure.