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Hamlet

2000, Movie, NR, 178 mins

Hamlet: Review

Do we really need another Hamlet movie? Why not, if it means an opportunity to see a talented group of actors, many known only through their television work, do some serious acting. Campbell Scott does double duty as co-director and star in this slightly abridged version of the play (it's nowhere near as complete as Kenneth Branagh's exhaustive four-hour 1996 treatment, but neither is it as ridiculously overblown), and acquits himself admirably on both fronts. Once again, something's rotten in the kingdom of Denmark. The country is bracing itself for another war with Norway, and the restless ghost of the dead king (Byron Jennings) is demanding revenge for his foul murder. His son, Hamlet (Scott), swears vengeance, but the killer isn't easily caught: Old Hamlet was done in by none other than his brother, Claudius (Jamey Sheridan). And Claudius is the new king, young Prince Hamlet's uncle and, having shamefully married the widowed queen, Gertrude (Blair Brown), also his stepfather. Hamlet rather rudely puts aside his dalliances with the lovely Ophelia (LisaGay Hamilton), daughter of pompous councilor Polonius (Rosco Lee Browne) and sister of master swordsman Laertes (Roger Guenveur Smith), and after briefly flirting with suicide, gets down to business. Hamlet's strategy involves a show of madness — although the knowledge that his mother is canoodling with his father's murderer has left him precariously close to the real thing — and enlisting the help of a group of traveling players to expose the guilty conscience of a murderous king. The king, meanwhile, has set the prince's childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Michael Imperioli, Marcus Giamatti), to sussing out the melancholy Dane's frame of mind. Ideally, Claudius would like to ship Hamlet off to England before he further undermines Claudius's already troubled reign. Set during what appears to be the early 1920s, Scott's low-key production could be a deliberate response to Branagh's excess: Instead of a lavish Russian palace, the filmmakers stage the play in a stately manor house on Long Island's Gold Coast, and Gary DeMichele's understated piano score is mainly reserved for interludes between scene. The cast is similarly impressive; they're American through and through, and thankfully refrain from affecting anything remotely resembling a British stage accent. While Guenveur Smith is something of a weak link — he squeezes out his lines in a husky mumble that puts Brando to shame — Scott is something of a revelation; his words are indeed spoken trippingly on the tongue. leave a comment --Ken Fox