For his first full-length film as a director, Al Pacino has chosen a subject with personal value and a clearly stated goal: making Shakespeare accessible to the general public. Divided among interviews with Shakespearean experts and pedestrians, behind-the-scenes footage of preparing actors (including Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, and Kevin Spacey), and performances of scenes from Richard III, Looking for Richard largely succeeds in conveying both Pacino's irrepressible enthusiasm for the material and the tangled contextual background that makes Richard III so difficult for the uninitiated. Pacino skillfully integrates each element of his material, constructing a piece as lively as it is informative. Unfortunately, the performance sequences—often excellent, but too often edited to look like scenes from Natural Born Killers—all but overwhelm the film's second half, dispensing with several of the elements that made the first half so fascinating. Nevertheless, Pacino has made an enjoyable, deeply considered presentation of difficult material. It's heartening in the value it attributes to the intellect, and in the serious attention it pays to the power of words.