Cinema: Titus

STARRING: Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Laura Fraser, Harry Lennix DIRECTOR: Julie Taymor OPENS: Dec. 25 in N.Y.C. and L.A.; wide in Jan.

Shakespeare has caught a few breaks at the movies lately. Romeo and Juliet and Richard III became vigorous films that did honor to both the Bard and the medium. Now Julie Taymor, the magician who on Broadway turned The Lion King menagerie into masked enchanters on stilts, takes Shakespeare's goriest play, Titus Andronicus, and makes it vivid, relevant and of elevating scariness.

A boy, his face hidden by a paper-bag helmet, plays an improvised war game with toy soldiers on his kitchen table. An explosion startles him, the room bursts into flames, and a giant totes him out of the late 20th century and into 1st century Rome. Hence, the action will take place in both ages. Imperial warriors, caked with the dust of conquest, tramp through the Coliseum like bulky action figures. Their leader Titus (Hopkins) is a straight-spoken military man of the past; his rival, the emperor Saturninus (Cumming), is pure oil of modern politician, oozing endearments and threats, riding through Rome in an open limo with a bubble top, seizing and betraying Titus' daughter Lavinia (Fraser). Tattoos abound, on the royal Goth captives led by Tamora (Lange) and on the Moor Aaron (Lennix). A big band plays at Saturninus' Saturnalia; heavy metal accompanies the Goths. A tiger stalks the forest.

Taymor keeps the eye as busy as the ear; she embellishes the story without disfiguring it. There's room in her bestiary for fine performances, a pretty collision of histrionic styles. Cumming preens, Lennix schemes, Lange smolders. Then all cede to Hopkins, who, in the suitably grisly finale, serves up Titus as Hannibal Lecter with a noble vengeance. Rare and well done!

Other movies this season have bigger stars, higher budgets, pricier effects, deeper tans. But if you're looking for a complex weave of word and image, and an early clue to where film might go in its second century, your Christmas shopping can begin and end with this towering Titus.

--R.C.