Othello (Full Frame)

VHS, R, 105 minutes, TURNER HOME ENT

Promote someone else to the rank of lieutenant? Over Iago's dead body! And more pointedly, over the dead bodies of nearly everyone ensnared in Iago's plot of green-eyed revenge. Jealously, passion, misplaced trust: the themes of Shakespeare's towering tragedy permeate this fresh adaptation that moves like a swiftly plunged dagger and features actors filled with the fire of their craft. Kenneth Branagh (Iago), Irene Jacob (Desdemona) and Laurence Fishburne in the title role of the warrior who could rule armies but not his own heart play the principals in this tale set in Renaissance Venice - yet belonging to the ages. In this "Othello, we see how the Bard's plays can be reshaped and reinvented for the screen without diminishing their power. The Moor who "loved not wisely but too well" commands his attention now and for generations to come in this version played and filmed both wisely and well.