Review: 'Measure for Measure' Transforms Shakespeare's Comedy into Moody Underworld Drama

Damian Hill and Paul Ireland adapt Shakespeare's salty comedy "Measure for Measure" for contemporary Australia, setting the action at a housing project and re-casting the characters as the various criminals and residents who make up the project's ecosystem. Most notably, perhaps, Hill and Ireland jettison the play's Elizabethan English, substituting thoroughly contemporary dialogue in its place.

The story commences with a drug-addled bias crime, as a stoned racist goes on a shooting rampage that mostly targets immigrants. A young Muslim women named Jaiwara (Megan Smart) nearly becomes a victim, as does a young Army vet named Claudio (Harrison Gilbertson). Their narrow escape from death creates an instant bond that quickly deepens into more – to the displeasure of Farouk (Fayssal Bazzi), one of the project's rival crime bosses, who believes it "unnatural" for a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man to be romantically involved.

When a dirty cop in Farouk's pocket frames Claudio on a drugs charge and the young man ends up in prison, Jaiwara seeks help from the projects' other crime boss, Duke (Hugo Weaving). Since Duke is lying low in the wake of the drug-fueled shooting – in part to test his right-hand man, Angelo (Mark Leonard Winter), whose idea it was to introduce hard drugs to the neighborhood – it's Angelo with whom Jaiwara must broker some sort of agreement on Claudio's behalf. But when Angelo makes it clear he'll only accept sexual favors in exchange for his intervention, both Claudio and Jaiwara have to consider their limited options carefully.

The script strips the bawdy comedy from Shakespeare's play, creating an atmospheric drama in which loyalties are tested against tragic flaws. Farouk – blinded by his narrow dogmatic worldview – is also literally losing his sight as the result of an injury sustained in his war-torn home country; Angelo, meantime, knows he's asking for nothing but trouble when, egged on by a vicious underling called Lukey (Daniel Henshall), he ignores Duke's orders and opts to "flood the city" with hard drugs during Duke's absence. Duke, who carries old loyalties and lingering grief of his own, monitors the situation, only reluctantly becoming involved when he sees that no one else is going to uphold what he sees as matters of principle. (It's a hoary trope, but Weaving's mix of heart and danger gives his killer with a code credibility and depth.) That two innocent people in love suffer from everyone else's corruption is, of course, the most reliably venerable of the film's meditations on morality, and LGBTQ audiences will all too readily relate.

And yet, the film achieves a certain hard-won grace, stepping nimbly through the tricky landscape of its Shakespearean plotting and managing to maintain an atmosphere of gravitas and tension. Co-writer Paul Ireland – a prolific actor – shows himself to be a more than competent director, though this is only his sophomore directorial effort. Walking away from this particular example of cinematic alchemy, one wonders what he might get up to next.