Kurzel, with a screenplay by Jacob Koskoff, Todd Louiso and Michael Lesslie, gives us a grubby look of Scotland and the battle scenes, with plenty of blood spilling and everyone looking as if they need a good bath. It is an effort to tell it like it was.

However, he botches the witches from the original by having them wandering about through the film. Lady Macbeth doesn’t have the required strength in the performance by Marion Cotillard, who in some of the more intimate conversations is hard to understand. There is also a sequence in which Macduff’s wife and children are publicly burned at the stake, not the way they were murdered in the play. However, the poignancy of when Macduff (Sean Harris) hears what happened to his family comes through movingly. Lady Macbeth’s self-recriminations are done in a totally different manner that loses the impact of Shakespeare’s famous “Out damn’d spot” scene.

The big plus is the performance by Michael Fassbender in the title role. He has a great screen presence and adds authenticity. But he is undercut by the messy interpretation. In a climactic scene, the forest is afire instead of being seen coming to Birnam Wood. The confrontation between Macbeth and Macduff is bloody but doesn’t have the power that it should.

Other cast members are effective, including David Thewlis as the murdered King Duncan, with his bloody killing one of the more impressive moments.

I have fond memories of Roman Polanski’s much more traditional and striking Macbeth. Although he had Lady Macbeth sleepwalking in the nude in the castle, at least that was more provocative than Cotillard babbling away in a church.