Almereyda pares the drama down to its bloody core, leaving a potent tale of despair, madness and loss.
Comment
07/06/08
Hamlet (2000)
56
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:84
Fresh:47
Rotten:37
Average Rating:5.8/10
Consensus: Stiff performances fail to produce any tension onscreen.
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Ethan Hawke stars in this modern update of Shakespeare's classic play. He portrays a young filmmaker in New York City who struggles to gain power of his deceased father's company, even as the new... [More]
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julia Stiles, Kyle MacLachlan, Diane Venora
Director: Michael Almereyda
Reviews for Hamlet
Top CriticAlmereyda modernises and streamlines without trivializing, and amplifies poetic melodrama with regular ingenuity and energy.
06/03/06
Top Critic[This is] an imaginative and exciting update, lacking only the decent swordfight the ending demands.
06/03/06
Visually the film is riveting, using the setting with real style and emotion.
12/10/01
Just not quite daring or spectacular enough.
06/12/01
Top CriticInstead of being a companion to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo And Juliet (1996) , this can be filed under wasted opportunities.
03/08/01
Top CriticClick to read the article
09/10/09
Click to read the article
10/18/08
It could prove almost as definitive -- and far more easily digestible -- than Branagh's textually complete version.
07/06/08
Top CriticThe movie is almost playful in its mission to burrow around inside Hamlet and discover what's still relevant about it.
09/17/07
The lines are read for the most part with more feeling for the angry-stepchild plot than for the iambic pentameter.
04/27/07
The city becomes a living emblem of the tense coexistence of art and corporatism, an uneasy relationship which Almereyda emphasizes as the core conflict of his picture.
06/03/06
I guess Johnny Depp was busy, so they got the one that can't act.
06/03/06
No, Ethan Hawke can't do Shakespeare.
06/03/06
In a sense, it's B-movie Shakespeare, the same as Orson Welles' inspired version of Macbeth (1948), which was produced on a skimpy budget for a B-picture studio.
05/26/04
Hamlet is supposed to be melancholy, but Hawke plays him as a disturbed loner who is more likely to infect the world's computers with an e-mail virus than avenge his father's murder.
06/06/03
Consider it a primer for Kenneth Branagh's four and a half hour Hamlet opus.
04/19/03
Fear not. This Bard is anything but boring!
09/20/02
This film is a refreshing contrast to the latest batch of Shakespeare films.
07/12/02
Top CriticIcy-cold in its palette and unwaveringly cool in its application of modern settings and gizmos to a text that stands up to endless reinvention, this is a Hamlet that brings imagination matched by thoughtfulness to its appeal to both eye and ear.
04/11/02
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