With Denzel Washington as its star, Julius Caesar may be doing business at the box office, but does Washington have any business in this politics-at-its-ugliest Shakespeare opus? On the evidence of the Marcus Brutus that he's offering at present, the answer is a blunt "No!" When the handsome, often awesome actor took on Richard III for the New York Shakespeare Festival a few years ago, the results were unpersuasive. As Brutus, Washington is at sea, even though he has two Oscars on his mantle and a fair amount of stage experience in contemporary works behind him.

Racing through the Bard's poetry as if he has to catch a flight to his next film set, he's virtually unintelligible, which obvio[...]