IOBdennis WARNING: If you want to spoil Shakespeare forever, see this movie!Almereyda both directed and adapted the play for the screen. Shakespeare's script is butchered. Some famous soliloquies are missing; some cut up and thrown all over the place; and some cut off mid-stream. The directing was okay, but I cannot forgive this man for taking Shakespeare's words and defecating all over them. He shows absolutely no respect for the originals, not that adapting is bad. I've seen wonderful adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, but this one is a true abomination.Some aspects of the screenplay make absolutely no sense. For example, what is the purpose of the Bill Clinton news clip in the middle of one of Hamlet's soliloquies? And one of the last shots, a vapor trail of a jet flying over some statue! Was that supposed to be one of the "flights of angels" singing Hamlet to his rest? Granted, artistic license and freedom of expression, but good grief! This was pathetic.

evening1 I enjoyed but wasn't bowled over by this version of "Hamlet" set against glitzy New York City, my adopted hometown.The city looked great; the principals less so. While Diane Venora and Kyle McKlachlan were wonderfully convincing as the middle-aged lovebirds, Ethan Hawke was merely OK as the sweet indecisive prince, and Julia Stiles, so wonderful in Luhrmann's "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet," was a bit drab as his suicidal flame. I enjoyed Bill Murray in a rare serious role as the tragic pedant Polonius. Liev Shreiber, great in movies such as "Defiance," merely phones in his depiction of boring protective brother Laertes.The "play within a play" segment was exceptionally well-done; I thought making Hamlet out to be a kind of avante-garde film student was a very creative way of handling this critical piece of Shakespeare's masterpiece.Given how creatively that part of the play was handled, it seemed unimaginative to have Hamlet's and Laertes's final scene be a traditional fencing duel. With Denmark having been modernized to the Denmark Corp., a sword fight seemed anachronistic and lazy.In all, however, this wasn't a bad way to spend an hour and 55 minutes.

sweetmachinedc Despite a solid, understated performance from Shepard (I'll echo that his is one of the best Hamlet's Ghosts ever), and some clever innovations with Shakespeare's play, this version is woefully lacking...mostly due to the sub-par acting from otherwise solid performers. Do NOT, as others have suggested, show this to your high school students -- unless you hope to pander to their level of media-induced mediocrity. I showed scenes from it to my freshman comp students and they laughed in all the wrong places....even more so than the Mel Gibson (Zeffirelli) version.Ethan Hawke...whom I've admired in other films...just does not have the chops to carry such an important role. And whatever team decided to cast Bill Murray and Julia Stiles as Polonius and Ophelia, respectively, must've been seriously deluded with the idea that they'd cast a wider net to lull an unsuspecting audience to their lackluster production.I expected Murray to play Polonius in all its campy potential, only to be sorely disappointed at his taking the role way too seriously. He wasn't successful. As for Stiles, every time I see her in any film I wonder how she manages to get any sort of acting gig. Her Ophelia is so wooden and boring that she becomes a laughing-stock in every scene...not what we should expect from such a tragic heroine. Her Ophelia's descent into madness becomes a silly, drunken Guggenheim art-party rant rather than the telling evocation of her frailty and vulnerability and is, as a result, diminished to the point of absurdity. While we can blame the director more than the actor for that decision, after seeing her scene earlier with Murray when he advises her not to pursue Hamlet, we ultimately realize that Stiles couldn't have carried that scene no matter the direction. She's just bloody awful.I kept hoping the movie would get better, and it just never does. All the clever, well intended innovations the director tries to bring to the production just fall flat without the necessary cast to carry them.

dianefhlbsch It was very exciting to FINALLY have someone more age appropriate portraying Hamlet. The modernized setting intrigued me. But there are just some things that do not transcend to the modern world - avenging a father's death, a prince getting away with multiple murders and "Get thee to a nunnery...", for starters.This is a strong cast that was hampered by the direction, screenplay and editing. Ophelia was too childish, Polonius too silly, and Hamlet too unimpassioned.If you're a Shakespeare freak, give it a whirl. But this is NOT the one to show in English class!