Click here for the review of Coriolanus

SPOILERS must be tagged with the "SPOILER" tag!

I enjoyed Taymor's revival / modernization of Titus Andronicus, so I think this is one I'd also enjoy. Thanks for the review, James!

A couple of quibbles. The protagonist (I'd shudder to call him hero) is actually named Caius Martius, not Martinus; and the Volscian city is Antium. I'm not sure what the stand-in city for Antium is, but I know much of the film was shot in Belgrade. If there was a real Caius Martius Coriolanus (that's disputed), the events of the play take place a decade or so after the overthrow of the Tarquins, so the republic would still be unstable.

The movie's pretty good; the updating makes some of the dialog strange, but worked for me. Fiennes was like a cross between Voldemort, George Patton, Darth Maul and a vulture. If one of the Spider-Man movies decides to use the Vulture, we have a natural to play him. Redgrave, Cox, and Gerard Butler were good. Chastain's Virgilia's okay but was really overshadowed by the competition, especially since she had to share a lot of scenes with Redgrave, playing the kind of mother who'd say "Come back with your shield or on it."

There is a huge and visceral battle scene (Corioles, which is where Martius wins the name Coriolanus) in the first half, and some amazingly tense confrontations with the rabble Martius despises.

I'm a little surprised this hasn't been filmed more often, but James is right, this is the first big-screen treatment; it also got terrible distribution in the United States. But it's now available from Netflix and worth checking out.

It was a fairly well made movie for such a difficult play to produce and I never found it confusing.Good on the director.The description in the quote box is kind of odd and I am not sure I saw that at all of the character.Coriolanus is a tragic heroic figure with flaws that makes him an unwitting villain to everyone in the play.He is a loyal,fearless and brave soldier that goes way beyond the call of duty for his country. His downfall is being convinced to run for consul by his grasping mother against his better first judgement that it would cause civil strife.His flaws of an inflexible honor and utter disdain for the military shirking plebeians is exploited by his political enemies to provoking him into being exiled from Rome then his mother uses his honorable nature against him to trick him into a peace treaty earning the hatred of his Volscian allies who kill him.He is a person who thinks he is doing the honorable thing each time but is just being manipulated by wily cynical political operators like his mother,the tribunes of Rome and the Volscian king for their own ends.He is not a megalomaniac only too prideful.

Darth Maul for fighting ability and how his face looks after he's been fighting awhile. Vulture because his head is shaved and those hard eyes.

Ralph Fiennes is the director. He played the role on stage and is a good match for the character.