This movie is going to sound really stupid: Scotland, PA sets Shakespeare's Macbeth in 1975. When Joe "Mac" McBeth (James LeGros) gets passed over as manager of Duncan's diner, his wife, Pat (Maura Tierney), convinces him to kill Duncan and put in a drive-through window. A trio of hippies gives Mac advice with a Magic 8-Ball. The investigating officer is Ernie McDuff (Christopher Walken), a vegetarian who dreams of opening a restaurant of his own.

Despite all this, I really enjoyed Scotland, PA. Writer/director Billy Morrissette's script invests the rural Pennsylvania setting with texture and engaging details. The cast is simply great: LeGros is both charming and creepy; Tierney is smart and bitchy, and looks really, really hot in pantsuits; and Walken is clearly enjoying himself in a rare good-guy part.

My only quibble is this: Why, when doing this kind of adaptation, do filmmakers make obvious and distracting references to source material? Why don't they learn from the smartest literary adaptation of our time, Clueless, which made perfect sense to anyone who'd never even heard of Jane Austen? Far too much of Scotland, PA will be pointless to anyone unfamiliar with Macbeth. Literary theft is better served by discretion than homage.