Macbeth
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: December 4, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
6
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 10, 2015
This cinematic Macbeth possesses a terrible beauty, evoking fear, sadness, awe and confusion. Presented with the aesthetic of a dark comic book, it’s also a mournful masterpiece, rendering Shakespeare’s spectacle with all the sorrow and majesty that it deserves. Read full review
100
EmpireAngie ErrigoSep 28, 2015
Inspired, innovative, stunning, with unforgettable performances and images, this is up there with the great screen Shakespeares. The playwright surely would be thrilled with it in its full-blooded vigour. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 24, 2015
Justin Kurzel’s blistering, blood-sticky new screen version of Macbeth unseams the famous Shakespearean tragedy open from the nave to the chops, letting its insides spill out across the rock underfoot. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 24, 2015
Fearsomely visceral and impeccably performed, it’s a brisk, bracing update, even as it remains exquisitely in period. Read full review
95
TheWrapInkoo KangDec 4, 2015
Fassbender manages to find the psychological throughline that makes Macbeth’s increasing mental deterioration — a development that can feel overly formalistic, not to mention moralistic — wholly convincing. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 24, 2015
Aided by intensely committed performances from a uniformly brilliant cast, all fielding Scottish accents, Kurzel's genius is to be able to find clean lines of dramatic connection and motivation within the existing text and then to interpret those imaginatively, without becoming simplistic and without compromise. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesGary GoldsteinDec 3, 2015
It's the gripping and verbally deft cast, led by a swaggering, formidably brooding Fassbender and a searing and poignant Cotillard, that may emerge most memorable here. Read full review
90
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlDec 1, 2015
This is a Macbeth to sink into and shrink from, not one to parse. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 10, 2015
Macbeth takes liberties with the particulars of the Shakespeare play, but is fascinatingly true to its spirit. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 10, 2015
[Kurzel's] vision of what he wants his Macbeth to be never wavers. And he has the actors to make it happen. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeSep 29, 2015
This Macbeth is ferociously well acted. Fassbender’s prowling energy electrifies the film. Read full review
80
Total FilmMatt GlasbySep 28, 2015
Bleak as a morgue, even more brutal than the play, Kurzel’s stark psycho-drama can’t unseat its source, but is still mighty screen Shakespeare. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 24, 2015
Artfully, his films tracks the tragic decline of a good man gone bad, who finds murder too insignificant not to do again and again, a worthy addition to William Shakespeare's ever growing filmography. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 24, 2015
There is a lot of sound and fury in this Macbeth, but not without meaning. It’s not perhaps a very subtle version, and I felt that Kurzel should have perhaps worked more closely with Fassbender with the contours of his speeches, and shown the painful mind-changing and nerve-losing in the early stages. There is an operatic verve. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 24, 2015
An intensely compelling work. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 9, 2015
The trouble comes, and not just for Fassbender, when it’s time to tackle the actual text. The toil of it is exhaustingly felt. The lines are spoken, but their weight sometimes is as vaporous as that Scottish fog. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 10, 2015
If Macbeth comes off at times like a Classics Illustrated comic-book adaptation (there is one, from 1955), it can also be quite moving, quite troubling, haunting, even. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireDec 4, 2015
If you’re not already somewhat familiar with Shakespeare’s tragedy, this incarnation isn’t about to go out of its way to provide much context or explain why certain characters matter. But in an intriguing contrast, while the scale of the battles and the scenery is enormous and awe-inspiring, some of the more famous moments and lines arrive in understated fashion in intimate spaces. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 4, 2015
Marion Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth, however, is a triumph. She seems transfixed by her own capacity for evil, and her mad scene is one of the most unhistrionic, and therefore spookiest, ever filmed. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 3, 2015
If you haven't seen Marion Cotillard play Lady Macbeth, you really haven't seen the role inhabited with the glorious fire and ice it needs to haunt your dreams. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithDec 3, 2015
Lately, the Shakespeare plays on film tend to be either too self-consciously irreverent on the one hand or too stodgy on the other; Kurzel’s Macbeth takes a point of view without betraying the Bard. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 3, 2015
The film’s raw performances get upstaged by Kurzel’s medieval shock-and-awe palette. The text has been streamlined to make room for more brutal mud-and-blood battle sequences, hauntingly shot by Adam Arkapaw. Read full review
75
HitfixGregory EllwoodMay 24, 2015
Beyond the performances, this new “Macbeth” benefits from Kurzel’s inspired eye, the increasingly impressive talents of cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (“True Detective”) and Fiona Crombie’s period-loving production design. The world they have created for this tragedy may overwhelm, but it's certainly impossible to forget. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 3, 2015
Mr. Fassbender gives you a reason to see this Macbeth, although the writing isn’t bad, either. Read full review
70
Screen DailyStaff [Not Credited]May 24, 2015
One of the most consistently engrossing elements of Macbeth is Kurzel’s vision of that harsh world, helped by a tight unit of costume, design and camera. Read full review
67
ConsequenceBlake GobleDec 14, 2015
It’s a fierce, visceral vision with a superb cast, that one suspects was more focused on pumping up Macbeth than reminding people why it’s such a lasting cautionary tale. Read full review
67
IndieWireKaleem AftabMay 24, 2015
This particular tale of sound and fury signifies more than nothing, but only just. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczDec 2, 2015
Something sexy this way comes. With an electrifying Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard headlining Macbeth, there’s going to be heat. Even more so since they’re both magnetic and silver-tongued in this jaggedly beautiful but sometimes jarring film. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloDec 2, 2015
We’re talking maximum sound and fury, and while no movie that stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard could signify nothing, this one doesn’t signify a whole lot. Read full review
50
Boston GlobePeter KeoughDec 10, 2015
The fundamental problem with this Macbeth is that it insists on reducing the mystery of motivation to the pop psychology of a magazine article. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 10, 2015
Partly, I think, the problem lies in Kurzel and his key performers being so determined to make the language conversational and naturalistic, they forgot to make the individual scenes move. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineSam C. MacNov 29, 2015
Throughout, director Justin Kurzel's stagey pretensions clash with each of his aesthetic choices. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 1, 2015
The problem is not that Kurzel cuts the words, which is his absolute right, but that he destroys the conditions from which they might conceivably have sprung. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 30, 2015
I can’t decide if Kurzel’s Macbeth is worse than the geriatric Maurice Evans–Judith Anderson version I was forced to endure in high school, but it’s certainly less lively than the two terrible gangster updates, Joe Macbeth and Men of Respect. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 3, 2015
Kurzel and three screenwriters have figured out a way to make Macbeth boring. Now that they proved it can be done, no one need ever do it again. Read full review
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