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SCOTLAND, PA
Over the years Shakespeare’s Macbeth has undergone many cinematic transformations: at the hands of Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa (Throne of Blood), in a Hugh Hefner production helmed by Roman Polanski, and more recently in the forgettable Mafioso rendition Men of Respect. Here, the castle is a ’70s burger joint in the bucolic town of the film’s title. ER’s Maura Tierney is a mentally unraveled termagant named Pat McBeth who incites her husband to murder. James LeGros is quirky yet conveys the requisite degree of malevolence as her homicidal short-order-cook spouse, employing a Frymaster to dispatch his trusting boss, Norm Duncan (James Rebhorn). And scene-chewing delight Christopher Walken rounds out the cast as Lieutenant McDuff, the loquacious detective and professed vegan hot on the McBeths’ bloody trail. The eclectic and talented cast carries Scotland despite a balky narrative, and you have to give writer/director Billy Morrissette kudos for having the audacity to transpose the Bard’s classic to (essentially) a McDonald’s. It’s a Mc-hammy concept that nearly succeeds.
BY TOM MEEK
Issue Date: February 21 - 28, 2002
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