Fiennes’ premiere foray behind the camera sees the veteran entering the arena on familiar footing but with an audacious application in itself: opting to stage one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, and further stylising it amidst an abstract Yugoslav War canvas. Pleasingly, the final product turns out well – the play being a simple but effective tragedy containing both gripping political interplay and powerful prose from the Bard, and the postmodern transposition and technique being surprisingly well-harmonised and immersive. More crucially, the reading by Fiennes himself, alongside a sterling Redgrave and respectable turns from Butler, Cox and Chastain, suffers from no shortage of vital passion, thus granting the piece its final dramatic sheen. A successful marriage of cinematic nuance and theatrical performance, this emerges as one of the more engaging Shakespearean films of recent years.