Director: Michael Almereyda
Producers: Andrew Fierberg,Amy Hobby

Starring:

• Ethan Hawke
• Kyle McLachlan
• Diane Venora
• Julia Stiles
• Bill Murray

I'm sure almost everyone is familiar to some degree with arguably the most famous English-language play ever written, but for posterity's sake I'll divulge a little bit of the plot. As stated earlier, it's set in modern-day NYC, where Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan) has just assumed control of the Denmark Corporation. This vexes his nephew Hamlet (Ethan Hawke), who is understandably pissed at the fact that his mother Gertrude (Diane Venora) has married her own brother-in-law not two months after the death of her husband (Sam Shepard). Not only that, Hamlet suspects some foul goings-on in the air, a feeling which is confirmed by the ghost of his late father, who relates a horrible tale of familial murder.

With the help of his friend Horatio (Karl Geary), Hamlet sets about trying to prove his uncle's guilt. At the same time, his relationship with his girlfriend Ophelia (Julia Stiles) takes a turn for the worst, thanks in no small part to the machinations of her long-winded uncle Polonius (Bill Murray), Claudius' trusted advisor. Claudius, for his part, sends two of Hamlet's childhood friends, Rosencrantz (Steve Zahn) and Guildenstern (Dechen Thurman), to spy on his nephew, and report anything and everything. Needless to say, for anyone who's read the play, things don't exactly turn out all warm and fuzzy, mainly because pretty much everyone bites the big one. That's why they call it tragedy, folks.

THE REVIEW:
I have to admit right off the bat, I was a little bit disappointed with Almereyda's HAMLET. Not that it was absolutely horrible; on the contrary, it was well-acted, and the ideas and visuals were clearly stated. It just seemed too intentionally pretentious, like some idiot film student came upon a camera and made it his goal to make everything look as totally COOL as possible. I loved some of the ideas with the multimedia, though. The scene in Blockbuster video, where Hamlet does his "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, was amusing, as our hero traipses through the action section (bringing to the fore the real meaning behind the neverending babble of words that passes for great English drama), and Hamlet's presentation of "The Mouse Trap" was completely unexpected yet so obviously perfect at the same time. The Blockbuster scene has another in-joke for film/Shakespeare fans, as throughout the scene THE LION KING plays on the store's video screens (said film being a Disneyfied cartoon version of Shakespeare's play). The scene where Hamlet debates whether or not to kill Claudius while he's in confession is restaged to admirable effect in a limousine.

Hawke, I have to admit, didn't embarrass himself in the most highly regarded role for an actor, although he didn't really impress me too much either. I really liked Bill Murray as Polonius, though. He has the character of the pompous windbag nailed, and he can speak Shakespeare's speech trippingly on the tongue. Liev Schreiber, whom I know mainly from the SCREAM trilogy, is far from the schlock-horror genre here, and acquits himself ably. The rest of the cast is solid, especially Steve Zahn and Dechen Thurman, whose job it was to make Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as annoying as possible. Well, it worked. By the time they accompanied Hamlet on the plane, I was wishing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were dead.

For a film that attempts to be visually innovative, it's worth noting how little Almereyda has actually improved upon other versions. The high-water mark for HAMLET films is still Kenneth Branagh's four-hour version from 1996. You'd think that, for a film that tries to be newfangled and controversial, Almereyda would go over the top with the visual references (like Baz Luhrmann's version of ROMEO + JULIET), but aside from a couple of scenes, it's remarkably low-key. I was also hoping for an ending that had been tweaked a little. After all, who fences anymore?

THE BOTTOM LINE: Nevertheless, thanks to the story (which, thanks to its potency, has survived for four hundred years), this HAMLET still rises above the majority of films written in this day and age. It's worth checking out just for its unique multimedia setting. The fact that the story is so familiar (having been filmed about 1,576 times before) offsets the modern-day telling, and makes what may seem like an avant-garde experiment feel a little more mainsteam than it should. It's worth a rental, though. Just try not to walk through the action section quoting Shakespeare as I did, or you may get strange looks. ***1/2 stars

     - Matt Easterbrook      ( Matt's Movie Reviews )