Hamlet - * *

Contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s famous play. Ethan Hawke stars as Hamlet. Also starring are Kyle MacLachlan (Claudius), Sam Shepard (The Ghost), Julia Stiles (Ophelia), Diane Venora (Gertrude) and Bill Murray (Polonius). Liev Schrieber, Steve Zahn, Casey Affleck and Jeffrey Wright will also star. Michael Almereyda adapted the play and will direct.

Capsule Review: A flat and uninteresting adaptation of Hamlet. Almereyda’s modern adaptation attempts to update the Bard’s most famous work into the world of corporations and camcorders. However, his effort seems strained at best. Unlike William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, which at least created an internally consistent fantasy world, Hamlet seems uneven, choppy, and not that interesting. There are plenty of excellent Hamlet adapations out there. This is not one of them.

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