Film

Macbeth

Name: Macbeth
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Action
Released: 2006
Cast: Sam Worthington, Victoria Hill, Lachy Hulme, Kate Bell, Steve Bastoni

Other titles called Macbeth: the 1948 film, the 1971 film, the 1983 film, the 1987 film, the 2015 film.

Gangster
Drama
Relentless

A contemporary crime thriller that transplants Shakespeare's MacBeth into a modern underworld of gangsters and ambition. Sam Worthington plays a loyal lieutenant consumed by prophecy and his wife's hunger for power, dragging him into an escalating spiral of violence. It's kinetic, nasty, and treats the material as pulp rather than reverence—for better and worse.

TMDb rating

2.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like Shakespeare's ambition cut loose into a gangland world, where a crime boss's climb is told with hard-edged style and a pulse that never quite lets up.

Skip it if you came for the verse and inner torment of the original, since this trades soliloquies for muscle, rapid cutting and bloodshed.

What it asks of you: Just under two hours with little slack, it keeps you on edge, cutting quickly between sleek set pieces and brutal violence, with few quiet pauses.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

GoodFellas1990

The template for ambitious crime thrillers: a charismatic protagonist rises through brutal hierarchies, seduced by power and status, until paranoia and violence consume everything. Scorsese's mastery makes the moral collapse feel inevitable.

But It's a masterpiece everyone's already seen. Also three and a half hours, and the first 45 minutes move deliberately.

In Bruges2008

Two violent men hide in a medieval town after a job goes catastrophically wrong. Sharp, blackly funny dialogue masks real moral reckoning—the script understands that men who kill for money don't get tidy endings or absolution.

But The whimsy can feel precious. Some viewers find the self-aware melancholy exhausting.

Miller's Crossing1990

A Coen Brothers Prohibition-era crime film where competing gangland factions and double-crosses create pure narrative propulsion. It's stylish and clever without winking—ambitious men betray each other in elaborate patterns.

But The period setting and rapid-fire dialogue demand attention. If you're not locked in, it feels baroque and remote.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Macbeth

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Name of the Rose1986

Both follow ambition and violence spiraling through enclosed worlds of power. One is a crime syndicate; one is the church. Same geometry of corruption, different cathedrals.

A medieval monastery becomes a crime scene where knowledge, power, and faith collide. It's built on escalating violence and betrayal within a closed hierarchy—the moral structure mirrors MacBeth's fall, but the intellectual stakes are much higher.

But Long, slow, and demanding. It's a puzzle box that requires you to track theology and monastic politics alongside the murders.

The Godfather Part II1974

Cuts between Michael's rise through ruthless pragmatism and his father's moral compromises. It shows how violent empires corrupt everyone who touches them, and what ambition costs beyond the visible body count.

But Nearly four hours. The first part's already in most people's heads, and the sequel operates on assumption of that knowledge.

Scarface1983

A portrait of a man whose hunger for power and money overwhelms every other instinct. Al Pacino's descent is operatic and relentless—by the end, the violence has become almost abstract in its extremity.

But It's aggressively loud and profane. The excess can read as exploitation rather than critique, depending on your tolerance.

The Killing2011

A Danish crime procedural where a detective's obsession with solving a murder consumes her career and relationships. Bleak, deliberate pacing; it understands that violence radiates outward and drowns everyone nearby.

But Twenty episodes of winter and bureaucracy. Some find the pace glacial; it rewards patience but doesn't forgive distraction.

Trainspotting1996

Addiction as a microcosm of ambition and self-destruction. Fast, visually feverish, and honest about how seductive the fall can be. The style matches the chaos it depicts.

But It's deliberately uncomfortable—graphic drug use, sexual violence, moral emptiness. The kinetic style can feel like it's celebrating what it means to critique.

The Counselor2013

Cormac McCarthy's script about a lawyer tempted into drug trafficking by greed and naïveté. Conversation-heavy, philosophical about complicity—it asks what happens when ordinary ambition meets real evil.

But Very talky and oblique. McCarthy writes circles around ideas rather than stating them, and the narrative sprawls without traditional plot momentum.

Brick2006

A high school noir about a young man investigating his ex-girlfriend's murder through criminal hierarchies of teenage dealers and enforcers. It's clever, compact, and treats adolescent violence with formal seriousness.

But The affected noir dialogue can feel arch. If the stylization doesn't work for you immediately, it'll feel like affectation for two hours.

Matador1986

Both are stories of charismatic men intoxicated by their own image and capacity for violence. MacBeth is Shakespeare processing ambition; Matador is processing the theatre of death itself.

Almodóvar's film about a retired matador and a beautiful young woman who are obsessed with death and violence in ways both sexual and spiritual. It's sensuous, surreal, morally inverted—characters who've consumed the myth of their own power.

But Very '80s camp; some plot beats feel dated. The tone lurches between erotic and absurd in ways that can feel unmoored.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike2012

MacBeth and Lady MacBeth are driven by a hunger for what they believe they deserve. This play is about the psychology of that feeling—resentment as fuel, ambition as a way to prove you matter. It's the emotional truth of the same impulse.

Christopher Durang's play about envy, thwarted ambition, and the corrosive resentment of people who feel cheated by life. It's funnier than MacBeth but carved from the same emotional register—desire twisted into bitterness and cruelty.

But It's theatrical and verbose; the comedy lands on precise language and timing. If you're impatient with dialogue-heavy work, it will test you.