SCOTLAND, PA (2002)

Writer-director Billy Morrissette's black comedy transplants Shakespeare's Macbeth to a Pennsylvania suburb circa 1972, where two post-hippie employees plot a bloody usurpation of their sire's fast-food outpost. But for a wealth of finely calibrated performances, it's a conceit that could all too easily have collapsed under its own jaundiced weight. LeGros makes for a shaggy, brooding Joe ''Mac'' McBeth -- just dim enough to be cajoled into the diabolical caper by his foul-mouthed wife (Tierney). Indie-film utility player Christopher Walken is in perfect pitch as the New Agey investigator who methodically closes the net around the homicidal spouses. But it's the sublimely compelling Tierney who ultimately lifts Scotland above mere period cheekiness.

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