I can't believe I've never seen
Ran. Anyway, I agree with much that's previously been mentioned, with a couple of additions:
Scotland, PA - I have four words for you: Chris Walken as MacDuff.
With that having been said, this was a neat take on
MacBeth -- instead of a kingdom, set it in a small-town restaurant (if you've ever lived in a small town, you know that the businessmen there are pretty much like nobility). And the buried frustrations, they do run deep. The "king's" murder is especially memorable.
And, Dr. Lamb, this one's for you. In one of my Shakespeare classes, the prof was out for a week, and another prof, Dr. Lamb, covered for him. We'd been reading
MacBeth, and she brought us in a movie adaptation -- a gangster flick from the 50s called
Joe MacBeth. It was all gangster, all the time; the other characters called him "Joe Mac," and Banquo was even "Banky." Which I thought was cute. Sue me.
What was really interesting about this whole thing were the connections between the settings -- taking a play about Scotland's ancient warrior culture and setting it in America's last true warrior culture. We had a kick-ass class discussion about this, and I've never forgotten that movie. I'd like to find it somewhere that doesn't involve me paying money to buy it online.
And I just realized that both these movies were
MacBeth adaptations. Huh.