By Amy Diaz
Titus (R)

His Literary Holiness, William Shakespeare, proves he can Jerry Bruckheimer with the best of them in Titus, an almost three hour version of the bloody play Titus Andronicus.

Back in my college Shakespeare class, Titus Andronicus was not one of the greatest hits. I believe it was brushed off as an early, unacclaimed tragedy. (Shakespeare in Love also had a great line about it being a gory play.) Titus is unlike any other of Shakespeare’s tragedies in the sense that there is no tragic hero. We don't root for anybody. The play seems like a big shiny action movie that is more about the blood and guts than the story; an Elizabethan era popcorn movie, an audience-pleaser for the whalebone corset crowd.

The movie begins as Titus (Anthony Hopkins) - followed by his soldiers, his 21 dead sons and his four living ones - returns victorious to Rome from a war with the Goths. He also brings with him as slaves Tamara, Queen of the Goths (Jessica Lange); her three sons and Aaron (Harry Lennix), their Moor advisor. Titus celebrates his victory by offering Tamara's oldest son in a sacrifice to the gods. His fun is short-lived however, as the Emperor dies and Titus - big moron that he is - picks Saturninus (Alan Cumming at his evil best) over the clearly less evil Bassianus to assume the throne. We can see right away that nothing good can come of this because everybody with a vengeful heart and a serious bone to pick is allowed to live. Tamara is the most pissed off and sets to work launching her various vendettas. By the end of the two hour and forty five minute movie, damn near everybody is dead and a few people even get eaten.

This is not Shakespeare at his best, but it is still Shakespeare. He makes this slasher movie look more highbrow than any modern writer could. I've seen this play (and the movie) compared to Kevin Williamson's Scream - a good comparison if you magnify the wit a thousand-fold. Just as Williamson gave a knowing wink to audiences as he used all the clichés of the horror genre, Shakespeare uses such exaggerated examples of violence that they are almost comic.

For all that the story is occasionally perplexing. There's this boy whose presence isn't really explained for about an hour and a half and the setting of the story isn't really clear; some sort of futurist fascist Rome as envisioned by Versace. Still, the performances are top notch. Hopkins plays Titus with the perfect mixture of cluelessness, insanity and blind-loyalty. Lange vamps it up as she has with several evil (usually Southern-accented) matriarch characters. Cumming is perfect as the flamboyant, adolescent king whose palace is a den of lots of iniquity. Titus's sons - who are virtually indistinguishable until they are whittled away to one - and his brother play excellent caricatures of the warrior-with-a-conscience type. As Aaron, Lennix is the perfect unrepentant villain.

Titus premiered in major cities around Christmas, but it continues to makes the rounds in theaters around the country. This movie is not for the faint of heart (or stomach) but it is an interesting, if blood-soaked look at one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays.

Copyright © 2000 HIPPOPRESS LLC. All rights reserved.