Director: Ralph Fiennes. Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Jessica Chastain, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave. UK 2011. 123 mins.

For his first film as director, Fiennes has tackled one of Shakespeare's most challenging plays - about a man who regards power as his right, but is unwilling to make the compromises required. The setting is a modern state (possibly in the Balkans) under threat from a neighbouring country. Coriolanus is a general whose efforts mean that the regime is triumphant, but when its people reject his rule he changes sides. In Fiennes' hands he becomes a character in conflict with himself. At one level a model citizen, his arrogance is such that he cannot accept he has to play the game by any rules but his own, and no one, neither wife nor mother nor friends, can influence him. This magnificent debut will become the defining cinematic text for this play.