To confirm his worst suspicions, he writes and directs a short film with none-too-subtle hints about his knowledge of the murder, which works almost too well. But he's soon haunted by the specter of his dead father, who reveals that the ambitious Claudius was indeed behind the evil deed.įrom there, Hamlet wavers between near madness and anger, eventually settling on revenge. The distraught lad immediately seeks comfort in the arms of Ophelia (Julia Stiles). And Hamlet's mother (Diane Venora) has already remarried - to his uncle Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan), who many suspect of his father's murder. His father (Sam Shepard), the president and CEO of Denmark Corp., has been killed. He's just returned from college overseas and finds himself in the midst of tragedy. Surprisingly, one of them is not the casting of Hawke, whose Hamlet is at least closer to the age Shakespeare intended him to be. And fortunately, the results aren't anywhere as jarring as the MTV-inspired, hip-hop version of "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet," which became an undeserved hit three years ago.Īlso, it's a mostly well-acted piece that falters only slightly because of a couple of wrongheaded moves.
But whether audiences will embrace this one probably depends on their reaction to those first two items.Įven though it's perhaps not as powerful as the material would suggest, the movie is just distinctive enough. There are other major differences between this truncated version of the tale and the many others that preceded it (especially Kenneth Branagh's full-text, four-hour adaptation). Oh yeah, and that melancholy Dane? He's metamorphosed into a pouty, twentysomething filmmaker wannabe, played by former Gen-X-spokesman-of-choice Ethan Hawke. There's something very different - but definitely not rotten - about this state of Denmark.įor one thing, Denmark is not a state or even a country in filmmaker Michael Almereyda's media-savvy and heavily revisionist version of Shakespeare's over-adapted "Hamlet." Instead, it's a multimedia conglomerate located in modern-day New York City.
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