"I felt that it should be absolutely set today," said Fiennes, on the phone from London last week. "I'm sure you could put Coriolanus into various historical contexts, because of its themes of nobility and warrior prowess - they're ancient.
"But I still feel that those themes are even more relevant today. Certainly, when I read up about the sort of military ethic of places like West Point, things haven't changed much, really."
In Coriolanus, with a screen adaptation by Oscar-nominated John Logan (for Hugo), Fiennes is Caius Martius Coriolanus, a mighty, mightily feared military leader. His mother, Volumnia (an awesome Vanessa Redgrave), is pushing him to seek the position of consul, but the citizens have turned against him. After much sturm und drang, Coriolanus is expelled from Rome, only to ally himself with his enemies - led by Gerard Butler - and then return to take revenge.
Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain, and James Nesbitt also star. The film opens Friday at the Ritz at the Bourse.
Fiennes, the English actor of Schindler's List, The English Patient, and The Reader fame - not to mention the role of one Lord Voldemort in a series of wee little fantasies about a boy wizard - has been thinking about a screen adaptation of Shakespeare's last great tragedy since he starred in a London stage production, back in 2000. Throughout the decade, he made his pitches to producers and film finance folk.
"It was difficult," he acknowledges. "Coriolanus isn't that well-known, and people who do know of it often find it a difficult play. Its reputation is that it's unwieldy, and that the hero is unsympathetic. . . .
"Actually, I love it, because I think it's confrontational and dynamic and provocative. It presents the audience with a very high-definition protagonist - he challenges you to dislike him."
