Directed by Australian Justin Kurzel (2011’s The Snowtown Murders), the latest big-screen Macbeth manages to be faithful to Shakespeare’s gloriously evocative language while taking the play in a new visual direction, toward deep-red fire, brimstone, and Grand Guignol gore and savagery. It looks like a Ronnie James Dio music video conceived by George R.R. Martin. Kurzel’s Game of Thrones-ification of Macbeth isn’t necessarily the worst or most unnatural creative impulse. After all, the play is a witches’ brew of grief, intrigue, bloodlust, paranoia, and insatiable hunger for power. And Fassbender conveys all of these bruise-black emotions with a seething ferocity, as does his costar Marion Cotillard as his scheming and no-less-tragic wife, Lady Macbeth. But the film’s raw performances get upstaged by Kurzel’s medieval shock-and-awe palette. The text has been streamlined to make room for more brutal mud-and-blood battle sequences, hauntingly shot by Adam Arkapaw. David Thewlis as King Duncan, Paddy Considine as Banquo, and Sean Harris as the ripsnorting Macduff all tap into the play’s visceral sound and fury. But Kurzel’s epic pageant of art-directed violence doesn’t signify as much as I suspect he thinks it does.