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10/18/08
Hamlet (2000)
54 %
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 81
Fresh: 44
Rotten:37
Average Rating: 5.7/10
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
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Reviews for Hamlet
It could prove almost as definitive -- and far more easily digestible -- than Branagh's textually complete version.
07/06/08
Top CriticAlmereyda pares the drama down to its bloody core, leaving a potent tale of despair, madness and loss.
07/06/08
The 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
Top CriticAlmereyda modernises and streamlines without trivializing, and amplifies poetic melodrama with regular ingenuity and energy.
06/03/06
[This is] an imaginative and exciting update, lacking only the decent swordfight the ending demands.
06/03/06
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
Icy-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
Top CriticThe result is more than a mere gimmick and less than an unqualifed success, but yes -- it's always watchable.
03/19/02
Top CriticVisually the film is riveting, using the setting with real style and emotion.
12/10/01
A disappointment because it failed to peak my interest like Baz Luhrman's Romeo & Juliet did.
11/03/01
What dooms this Hamlet to mediocrity is the quality of the acting, especially in the leads, and the general slowness and turgidity of the proceedings.
10/30/01
The acting is sketchy.
10/30/01
By equating the garish feudalism of the play's original setting with the megalopolis of today's New York, [Almereyda is] at least on the right track. The problem is, it's just about his only track.
10/30/01
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