The film begins with Al Pacino expressing his passion for Shakespeare to a modern world that thinks Shakespeare is inaccessible. He interviews a number of different people: strangers off the street, as well as Shakespearean scholars, actors, and other theater professionals, all about whether and why Shakespeare is important.
Pacino gathers actors in a New York apartment to begin to read Richard III, the play that he is setting out to perform and interpret. Pacino also travels to Shakespeare's birthplace and to the Globe Theatre. As the film progresses, we see scenes of Pacino trying to interpret and understand the text interspersed with staged scenes from the play, fully realized on location, with actors.
The story progresses just as the play's plot progresses. We see more scenes from the play created for film and as the story builds we watch as one of the producers of the docu-drama is asking when the film will be wrapped. He's ready to finish the passion project, but Pacino has become obsessed by it, both as an actor and a director. The film ends with a battle scene in a meadow, the scene in which Richard is slain and his reign of treachery ends.
