Shakespeare’s timeless story of revenge is put into a modern style of a psychological thriller.
⭐️⭐️
Event cinema – screening at Odeon.
Now I feel a little bit of background is essential before going into this review, or at the very least attempting this review as it is now nearly a week on since watching the film at the cinema and I have been struggling to come up with how to actually talk about it. I studies up to A Level in English Literature and therefore have studies quite a lot of Shakespeare over the years, this was actually my first encounter with Hamlet. Yes, I had heard of the “To be or not to be” speech but that was about it. Oh and I adore Ian McKellen so naturally I went to see it.
Hamlet, is the son of the late King and nephew of the new current King who married his mother. I mean that’s a pretty rough issue to deal with isn’t it, although instantly I felt as though it was a little bit tricky to follow given McKellen being older than both his father and mother. Seriously that just made it so tough to contend with and had me rather lost off in all honesty.
I don’t mind the reinventing of the setting and attempting to modernise it all but even with the dialog I found it difficult to follow. At times I felt as though I was watching a foreign film without the subtitles and that just blew my mind in a different way. I’m not sure if I had known more about the film story if that would have helped or not? I did enjoy the scene with the sword fight if nothing else.
The performances were strong though, I guess I just wasn’t feeling this production at all.
