Swiftly following Coriolanus' new theatrical trailer comes this stylishly grim-faced poster for the film. It features the two warring heavyweights, Ralph Fiennes' Caius Martius Coriolanus and Gerard Butler's Tullus Aufidius, going toe to toe across an ocean of black. If Shakespeare had made Face/Off, this is pretty much what the poster would have looked like.
As anyone who caught it at the Berlin Film Festival will testify, Fiennes' directorial debut is a crunching reinterpretation of the Bard's historical play. The Roman setting is modernised but Coriolanus remains the kind of soldier/politician unique to that period: an ambitious, grasping man with the steel but not the velvet to realise his ambitions. Boris Johnson, he ain't.
The tagline - "Nature teaches beasts to know their friends" - is suitably textural and profound. Words of wisdom, too, unless, like us, you've ever seen your cat try to attack a hedgehog. That semi-automatic warpaint is a neat reminder that the two protagonists have more than toga parties on their minds.
Fiennes and Butler are joined by a stellar supporting cast that boasts Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Chastain, James Nesbitt and Brian Cox as consul and Coriolanus' advisor. As if things weren't political enough for Coriolanus, he's got Treadstone in his ear. Burn.
**Coriolanus **is out in the UK on January 20.