Do you want to see ‘Hamlet’?

Hamlet (1996)

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All Critics
Top Critics

Average Rating: 8.2/10
Reviews Counted: 54
Fresh: 51 | Rotten: 3

Kenneth Branagh's sprawling, finely textured adaptation of Shakespeare's masterpiece lives up to its source material, using strong performances and a sharp cinematic focus to create a powerfully resonant film that wastes none of its 246 minutes.

Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 3

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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 30,173

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Movie Info

Hamlet, son of the king of Denmark, is summoned home for his father's funeral and his mother's wedding to his uncle. In a supernatural episode, he discovers that his uncle, whom he hates anyway, murdered his father. In an incredibly convoluted plot--the most complicated and most interesting in all literature--he manages to (impossible to put this in exact order) feign (or perhaps not to feign) madness, murder the "prime minister," love and then unlove an innocent whom he drives to madness, plot

PG-13, 3 hr. 58 min.

Drama, Romance

Directed By: Kenneth Branagh

Written By: Kenneth Branagh

In Theaters: Dec 25, 1996 Wide

Sony Pictures Classics

Cast

Critic Reviews for Hamlet

All Critics (54) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (54) | Rotten (3) | DVD (3)

There are many ... instances when you want to run screaming from Elsinore Castle.

September 25, 2002 Full Review Source: Washington Post

| Comments (4)

Desson Thomson

Washington Post

Top Critic

With his handsome and compelling Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh brings the Bard's greatest tragedy passionately alive on the screen.

August 15, 2002 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times

| Comment

Kevin Thomas

Los Angeles Times

Top Critic

This Hamlet may not be perfect, but it is perfectly engrossing.

April 12, 2002 Full Review Source: Globe and Mail

| Comment

Rick Groen

Globe and Mail

Top Critic

As star and ringmaster, Branagh gets to the heart of Hamlet and goes to admirable lengths to take his audience there, too.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: New York Times

| Comment

Janet Maslin

New York Times

Top Critic

Moviegoers who applauded the vigilante justice in such recent films as Joel Schumacher's A Time To Kill and Barry Levinson's Sleepers should be totally in sync with the action and have no trouble surmounting the verbiage.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Sacramento Bee

| Comment

Joe Baltake

Sacramento Bee

Top Critic

Every little triumph seems to inspire in Branagh some accompanying act of bad taste or judgment.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Salon.com

| Comments (3)

Scott Rosenberg

Salon.com

Top Critic

A work of tremendous personal ambition equipped with a budget nearly equal in magnitude.

April 20, 2011 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine

| Comment

Rob Humanick

Slant Magazine

Shakespeare's great tragedy -- all of it.

January 2, 2011 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media

| Comment

Randy White

Common Sense Media

To be, or not to be. Kenneth Branagh's seminal Hamlet is as conflicted and vital as life itself.

August 18, 2010 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine

| Comment

Rob Humanick

Slant Magazine

The play widely regarded as the best piece of dramatic literature ever written...[in] the only unexpurgated big-screen version. [Blu-ray]

August 16, 2010 Full Review Source: Groucho Reviews

| Comment

Peter Canavese

Groucho Reviews Source: Groucho Reviews

Simply gorgeous to look at, and a number of the performances are outstanding...

July 2, 2008 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide

| Comment

TV Guide's Movie Guide

Brave, yes, but undeniably excessive.

July 2, 2008 Full Review Source: Film4

| Comment

Film4

Die-hard Bard students may quibble, but this gargantuan and glorious Hamlet is a movie-lover's paradise.

September 17, 2007 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com

| Comment

Rob Gonsalves

eFilmCritic.com

...when I first saw it on DVD, I wrote that its spectacular sets and costumes cried out for high definition. Apparently, Warner Bros. thought so, too. (Blu-ray Edition)

August 25, 2007 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis

| Comment

John J. Puccio

Movie Metropolis

Branagh combines one of the Bard's best plays with some of the best filmmaking the medium has to offer.

August 25, 2007 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis

| Comment

John J. Puccio

Movie Metropolis

The two-disc special edition DVD release of Hamlet is spectacular.

August 23, 2007 Full Review Source: Apollo Guide

| Comment

Dan Jardine

Apollo Guide

Branagh has one-upped Olivier again by making his Hamlet a bold spectacle: big and loud and colorful.

August 16, 2007 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid

| Comment

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

Fine version of one of The Bard's best plays.

December 8, 2006 Comment

Steve Crum

Dispatch-Tribune Newspapers

If you're willing to sit through Branah's 4-hour Hamlet, you'll be rewarded with a lavishly mounted, full-bodied version that brings new dimensions.

July 15, 2006 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com

| Comment

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com Source: EmanuelLevy.Com

The few missteps, mostly in casting, are a drop in the bucket when it comes to this adaptation.

July 14, 2004 Comment

Widgett Walls

Needcoffee.com

Viewers patient enough to sit through four hours of this film are going to be rewarded with a memorable experience.

June 1, 2004 Full Review | Comment

Dragan Antulov

rec.arts.movies.reviews

More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Hamlet

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Just as a cinematic experience, this film is unparalledled. It takes the story and puts it in a different era, but for the most part keeps the rest of things intact. This is a grand, long, sweeping epic that reaqlly does justice to the Bard and this, his most famous/popular (I'd assume) story. The technical stuff, like

May 12, 2011

Chris Weber

Super Reviewer

Incredible direction coupled with incredible acting equals Kenneth Brannagh's Hamlet. Full review later.

August 21, 2010

Thomas Bowler

Super Reviewer

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