Review: 'Hamlet' sets Shakespeare's tale of grief and rage in modern London, and lets Riz Ahmed sink his teeth into a fiery performance

William Shakespeare wrote the play “Hamlet” around 1600, based on legends that date back 500 or 600 years earlier — and the marvel of Shakespeare’s longest and possibly best-known work is how it fits any era in which it’s made or set, including director Aneil Karia’s dynamic modern-dress version that’s propelled by an intense performance by Riz Ahmed.

The scene is London, starting with the death of the CEO of a major real-estate firm, Elsinore Properties. The CEO’s son, Hamlet (played by Ahmed), returns to England in the middle of a scenario that’s both ancient and current: The CEO’s brother, Claudius (Art Malik), is taking the company’s helm, and marrying his brother’s widow, Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha). Hamlet, guided by his father’s ghost, believes his father was murdered by Claudius, and that the only way to prove it is to pretend to be mad.

Michael Lesslie’s script takes Shakespeare’s play and strips it down to the essentials. Several familiar side characters are gone, such as Rosenkrrantz and Guildenstern. And Hamlet delivers the comments he would usually say to his trusted companion Horatio to two other short-term confidants: His friend Laertes (Joe Alwyn) and Laertes’ sister, and Hamlet’s former lover, Ophelia (Morfydd Clark). Also lurking about is Claudius’ sinister assistant, and Laertes and Ophelia’s father, Polonius (Timothy Spall).

As Karia, Lesslie and Ahmed imagine their “Hamlet,” it’s a story of a young man who’s been in the orbit of wealth for his entire life, coming to grips with how quickly loyalty and grief can fall short when power is up for grabs. Hamlet’s struggle, as always, becomes most clear in the soliloquy that begins “to be or not to be…,” which Ahmed delivers with an enraged shout while driving at dangerous speeds on the freeway. 

Karia, who directed Ahmed in the Oscar-winning 2020 short “The Long Goodbye,” gives us everything we need to understand “Hamlet” and nothing we don’t. Mostly, he clears the path for Ahmed to dig into the anger and frustration this character has held inside for centuries, making us understand Hamlet as a modern tragedy.

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‘Hamlet’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 10, in theaters. Rated R for some bloody violence, suicide, brief drug use and language.. Running time: 114 minutes.