Great Film overall

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I just watched the full length version of the play, televised by BBC in 1981 with Anthony Hopkins in the title role of Othello and Bob Hoskins playing Iago. It made me realize just how much the Fishburne/Branagh version from 1995 suffers by being cut to ribbons to fit in a much shorter time slot. The director finds time for sex scenes but leaves out scenes that are vital to fully understanding the background and the relationships and what is going on.The film is good, but should have been longer. Laurence Fishburne is good in the title role but not incredible, and again, he is missing some of his best lines due to editing. Irene Jacob is a bit weak as Desdemona and I do think it may have to do with English not being her native tongue. Kenneth Branagh as Iago virtually steals every scene he is in. He is just delicious. Fortunately he is in most of the scenes. He is evil even when he is about to make love to his wife, perhaps not in a way that she would like at all, from what I could tell.See it but then see one of the versions that does not have so much text cut out.

... or was Honest Iago actually smirking at the end, as he died?Loved how the Bard's iambic pentameter just rolled of Fishburne's tongue, with excellent clarity and emotion.And how Branagh made Honest Iago seem to celebrate his own evilness...This is a wonderful film.I have often thought that Shakespeare is inherently not film-friendly: He uses words to create pictures in our minds, which creates a perennial battle with the camera, which only knows to show us what we need to think and feel. Every effort to film Shakespeare ought really to be celebrated. It is not an easy thing to do.

For me, the Lawrence Fishbourne version of "Othello" is the best ever put on film. His performance is excellent, while not overpowering the villainous Iago. And the title role is played by a black man, as it should be, rather than a white man with boot-polish on his face. The film's marginal eroticism has been criticised, but isn't eroticism at the very heart of the story? Olivier's "Othello" was essentially a film of the stage production, and for me the Orson Welles version was a failure, despite Welles' star performance, because most of the other actors were almost devoid of charisma. How could Desdemona possibly have been interested in a slob like Welles' Cassio?I have always found the original play unconvincing, for several reasons. Iago's motive, resentment of Cassio's promotion, seems too trivial for the tragedy it precipitates. At risk of committing heresy, I found the Verdi opera more convincing, with the soliloquy by Iago explaining his innate determination to commit evil.Also, given the closeness of Othello's friendship with Iago, his decision to bypass him in favour of Cassio makes little sense. Likewise, Othello's readiness to believe the worst of Desdemona, and the ease with which Iago leads him on to murder, makes the title character look quite pathetic, almost simple-minded.In this film, the cutting of the text to the absolute minimum helps to hide the play's inherent faults and tighten the action, and Fishbourne's wordless suffering speaks volumes that more than make up for the loss of Shakespeare's lines. I couldn't help comparing this film with Kenneth Brannagh's "Hamlet", the longest and most tedious of his self-advertisements, in which every long-winded speech was preserved intact. Here Brannagh's Iago is almost as good as Fishbourne's Othello, and he makes the most of the lines he has.To sum up, ten out of ten. I can only regret that Fishbourne is not offered more roles of this quality.

shakespeare's plays have a way of transcending time. The language somehow breaks the time barrier. but perhaps it is the actors who really do that.after the disappointment in Romeo and Juliet (the version with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio), was hesitant take on another modern rendition of Shakespeare. To my surprise Othello was great!Iago's character was played so well by the Kenneth fellow! even thoough Iago is really evil and despicable, the character was played so well that it does what shakespeare intended for the charater to be, a pleasure for the audience to hate. i have to say that fishburne's performance here was really good as well.i recommend this for shakespeare scholars and lazy students (who refuse to read the book) alike.