Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Inmechon The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Eric Stevenson The most memorable part of this movie was when Hamlet was walking around the video rental store. Wow, this really does come off as an old story. Anyway, this movie is an updating of Hamlet in modern times and it wasn't quite handled that well. It's probably because they try to use the old dialogue in the modern times. It does come off as awkward. I still thought that the pacing was pretty good. I think Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are becoming my favorite Hamlet characters. We get the ghost of Hamlet's father and everything else.It's just that there was nothing unique about this version. I guess the longest movie I've ever seen in my entire life that adapts the same story would be a tough act to follow. It's still faithful to the original story. The actors aren't bad. It's just that they aren't bringing anything particularly interesting to the table. I guess when you see the same story over and over you get a bit tired of it. It's still interesting to see a modern version. **1/2

oOoBarracuda Michael Almereyda made an interesting attempt at a Shakespeare with his 1996 adaptation of Hamlet. Ethan Hawke stars in the titular role, with Kyle MacLachlan, Bill Murray, and Julia Stiles also starring. Hamlet is called home to tend to the death of his father, who he quickly believes to have been murdered by his uncle. Death and uncertainty are heavily explored in Almereyda's version set in modern-day New York, bringing the Bard's work into the 21st century.Hamlet (Ethan Hawke) experienced a vision before he returned to New York after the death of his father, CEO of Denmark Corporation. The vision makes Hamlet believe that his father was murdered by his Uncle, Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan) who is now the CEO of Denmark Corporation. Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, (Diane Venora) has changed her status of widower quickly after marrying Claudius. In order to determine if the vision was truly Hamlet's father warning him of Claudius, Hamlet makes a video about a tale of murder that resembles that of Hamlet's father in order to gauge his uncle's reaction. Once convinced of his guilt, Hamlet dedicates himself to avenging his father's murder. While plotting revenge, Claudius now realizes Hamlet has figured him out and is now a threat to Claudius' new empire and simultaneously plots against the young man. A tangled web of murder plots abounds in this intricate Shakespeare tragedy. This film was a mixed bag of good and bad. First the good; it was enjoyable to hear faithful Shakespearean dialogue in a modern New York setting. This decision on the part of Michael Almereyda was a wise one to engage both fans of Shakespeare and those that would otherwise forgo an adaptation of his. Those familiar with Shakespeare's original Hamlet will be happy for the faithful dialogue juxtaposed against the different setting. The quick cuts throughout the film were exciting and kept the audience engaged through the slower moments as the story unfolded. The bad; Bill Murray reciting faithful Shakespeare dialogue. The only bad part about the faithful dialogue was that no part of Bill Murray is Shakespearean in my mind and listening to him recite old English was an odd combination. The acting in this film was very cardboard. Ethan Hawke in the titular role came off incredibly unbelievable and stiff. Almost ever actor in the film, in fact, came off stiff and reserved. Kyle MacLachlan's Claudius was the only actor who seemed to take on his part with some enthusiasm to create a dynamic role. I'm not sure if the rigid acting was a directorial decision or not, but it was one that I still didn't understand, even as the film ended. Death certainly takes center stage in Hamlet. Once he learned of his father's death, Hamlet became obsessed with the idea of death. The reality of death consumed his being and he obsessively thought about and filmed about death while he was uncovering the possible murder of his father. He ponders the existential ideas concerning death, and the possibility of an afterlife. Death is continuously tied to issues throughout the film and the uncertainty death brings is Hamlet's primary focus. Thinking so much about his father's life and his untimely death causes Hamlet to consider his own death. In the famous "To Be Or Not To Be" soliloquy, which takes place within a Blockbuster in this film, Hamlet is plagued by the idea of suicide which is expressly forbidden in his Christian faith. Dealing with an unexpected death so close to him results in Hamlet not being able to shake the shadow of death which follows him throughout the film. Michael Almereyda's Hamlet is an interesting version of Hamlet that is one to see at least once for devoted fans of Shakespeare.

Steve Pulaski Michael Almereyda's Hamlet gets one major thing right and that's being a near-perfect representation of its respective time period - the 2000's. The film looks like most of its props were donated from a closing down Circuit City, as tube Televisions, Polaroid cameras, video rental cases, VHS tapes, and other odds and ends of technology populate the film almost as ubiquitously as beloved characters like Ophelia, Gertrude, and Claudius.Watching Hamlet, often billed as Hamlet 2000 for good reason, in the present day is fun because it seems like the direction Almereyda wanted to take got lost in the mix of keeping Shakespeare's original play dialog in the screenplay. From the opening minutes of the film, where Hamlet sees the ghost of his father on closed-circuit Television, it's almost as if the film is playing the story of Hamlet like a technological thriller - an undoubtedly subversive move for the anthologized play. The problem with this is because Shakespeare's original dialog is kept as the screenplay, Almereyda muddles any kind of concept and believable modernization potential this story had.The same sort of bastardization took place with Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, which had actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes spouting Shakespeare's original play dialog whilst holding handguns and driving cars glossed with candy-colored paint. The concept was intriguing, but the fact that no attempt was made in efforts to modernize or alter Shakespeare's original words to mesh with the appropriate time period and perhaps add a clearer focus on the story's themes resulted in a frustrating and ultimately lackluster slog through dialog that frequently seemed impossible to discern and follow during much of the film's action.Hamlet makes the same mistake; when reading Shakespeare, one can stop and reread and go back and analyze what exactly is being said, something even I, a committed English major, have difficulty doing in one sitting. Watching a play of Shakespeare's acted before you helps showcase character emotions better than if you just read the words to yourself, but watching a film that makes an attempt to subvert the material while making you sit through and analyze the film's classically written dialog and multitude of character relations is a frustrating chore on part of the audience.Because of this, one can't really appreciate the obsessive brooding of Ethan Hawke, who plays Hamlet here in a way that is defined by slicked-back/unkempt hair, black sweaters, and a bitter, unforgiving facial expression sustained throughout most of the film, nor can they really admire the sinister Claudius played by the underrated Kyle MacLachlin. The relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia (Julia Stiles) is also criminally shortchanged, to the point where the famous "nunnery" scene doesn't even seem to hold waterweight because of the sterile dialog that doesn't fit the time nor the setting.Certain moments of Hamlet more-or-less send sputters of originality, especially when the technological side plays into the story. The storyarch made to connect Hamlet with the year 2000 is how Claudius took over Hamlet's father's and his brother's company, Denmark Corporation. Just from that detail, combined with an increasingly technological landscape often appearing to haunt and toy with Hamlet's psyche, one would expect a biting tech thriller defined largely by Hamlet's deteriorating mental state in the face of complex equipment.While that theme is certainly embedded in Almereyda's film, it's practically smothered underneath the frequently impenetrably delivered dialog and stunted performances. Bill Murray's Polonius and Liev Schreiber's Laertes are brutally miscast and seem to be struggling at delivering the period-specific lines of Shakespeare in a retelling of Hamlet that is largely defined in reference and depiction by the year in which it takes place. The result is a misguided rehash of one of the most beloved stories in history, succumbing to traditionalism rather than pushing boundaries of complete and total revisionism; it's like having everything from a camera, a quality condenser microphone, a boom, and some of the nicest sets to shoot a movie and opting for a picture collage with no audio-track instead.Starring: Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Diane Venora, Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Bill Murrary, Karl Geary, Steve Zahn, and Sam Shepard. Directed by: Michael Almereyda.

sarastro7 There has never yet been a Shakespeare movie that took place in the present day which worked well artistically and aesthetically. In opera, modern productions frequently work well, but it's harder with Shakespeare, because he is so poetic that the surroundings need to reflect it, lest they undermine the poetic integrity. The milieu can't be pedestrian, and the words can't be casually and mumblingly delivered. In Almereyda's Hamlet, everything is pedestrian. There are great actors on hand, but they are never given the opportunity to shine. There is no depth of either intellect or comedy here (as Stanley Wells has remarked, Hamlet is the most comical of all the tragedies), and as others have mentioned it is particularly ironic to cast Bill Murray in the role of the play's comic relief character and then have him be serious throughout. Sigh. There is occasional decent acting from Schreiber, Styles and Venora, but I have nothing good to say about the rest. They can do much better, but the director must have failed to inspire them.The movie is a mess. All right, so it is trying to make some analogous points about a struggling film-maker, but it doesn't work well. To replace the medium of the play with the medium of the film as the thing in which the king's conscience will be caught is not a very interesting point, as plays and movies are so similar anyway.There were a couple of things I liked. I liked having the "To be or not to be" speech in the "Action" aisle of the video store, because that speech really is much more about action than about death. I also liked how Julia Stiles made it very apparent that the cause of Ophelia's madness was her powerful love for him, which he didn't requite. I don't think this is necessarily the best interpretation of what happens, but at least it is a clear one.But a main reason the movie is a mess is that the text is so chopped up. Omissions are inevitable lest the movie runs 4 hours, but it should be done with great care. Using the text selectively, and moving it around, always runs the risk of seriously undermining Shakespeare's points and messages, and one therefore needs a tremendously detailed understanding of the text (and its best interpretations) in order to edit it sensibly. Sadly, Almereyda does not possess such understanding.The movie is not completely awful; it is watchable, but most things about it just aren't very good. The characters often don't speak clearly, which debases (yes, debases!) Shakespeare's language, and the modern surroundings tend to be dull, dull, dull. Of the twelve different Hamlets I have seen on DVD, I'm afraid this one is nothing less than the worst of the lot.4 out of 10.