Revengers Tragedy

Seventeenth century language in 2011 sounds affected. Actually, it sounds ridiculous. Anyone who remembers Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, with Ethan Hawke and Julia Stiles, which re-enacted Shakespeare's angst-ridden bloodfest in 21st century New York, will understand the problem, except, in the case of Revengers Tragedy, it's not a problem so much as a disaster.

Attributed to Thomas Middleton, a contemporary of The Bard's, the emphasis is on murder, vengeance and depravity. In the 19th century, William Archer wondered whether the play, "with its hideous sexuality and its raging lust for blood can be said to belong to civilised literature at all." It would certainly appeal to Freddy Krueger and his ilk for the proliferation of violent death and its "pitiable psychopathic perversion."

Alex (Sid And Nancy) Cox likes to shake the cobwebs off convention. Trouble is, he can't tell a story. His futuristic gangster's court consists of people like Eddie Izzard, mocking from the safety of a taxi, and a cone-headed, pony-tailed Derek Jacobi, with violet lipstick and a Reggie Kray accent, behaving like Lothario's unmentionable uncle, the one who can't keep his hands off younger women. Diana Quick, as his nymphomaniac wife, appears to be enjoying a sexual relationship with her youngest son. The other lads dress up in drag and make cynical remarks from the edge of belief. It's completely mad.

Christopher Eccleston orchestrates the plot, like a capeless superpunk, fashionably lean and liable to have intimate conversations with a human skull. He runs the Elizabethan words around his palate before spewing them forth. He has big teeth and pretentious lips.

Jacobi's thugs poisoned Eccleston's betrothed and half the wedding guests in an earlier demo of vomit-till-you-drop. Now it's pay back time, which means more mayhem and a positively Shakespearean finale.

The film has a 15 certificate, being too ludicrous to be taken seriously. If Cox knew how to make movies and the future looked like Ridley Scott on amphetamines, it would have been awarded an 18 out of respect.

Writer/model/rolling stone Sophie Dahl appears in her first screen role, as an aristocratic rape victim - what else? Pity it had to be here instead of a contemporary remake of The Seven Year Itch, directed by the Farrelly brothers.