THE STORY – A contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set in a wealthy British South Asian family. Hamlet returns home for his father’s funeral and is shocked to learn that his Uncle Claudius will now marry his widowed mother. When his father’s ghost reveals that Claudius murdered him, Hamlet becomes consumed by revenge, questioning the corruption at the heart of the family’s business and his own sanity.
THE CAST – Riz Ahmed, Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn, Sheeba Chadha, Avijit Dutt, Art Malik & Timothy Spall
THE TEAM – Aneil Karia (Director) & Michael Lesslie (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 114 Minutes
William Shakespeare’s most enduring tragedy of revenge finds new life in Academy Award-winner Aneil Karia’s (“The Long Goodbye”) 2025 modernized version of “Hamlet,” a dark adaptation set in the vibrant South Asian community of present-day London. Bold in its conception and execution, the film strips away the polished length of so many Shakespeare adaptations and replaces it with something gritty and immediate. Backed by a searing performance from Academy Award-winner Riz Ahmed (who starred in Karia’s “The Long Goodbye”), this “Hamlet” is not your typical piece of Shakespeare. It’s a psychologically intense adaptation that will hopefully allure newcomers to Shakespeare’s work. Still, for those already familiar with the source material, it is burdened by comparisons to the countless other adaptations that have come before it.
A wealthy British South Asian family is shaken by the death of its patriarch (Avijit Dutt). Returning home for the funeral, his son Hamlet (Ahmed) is stunned to discover that his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) has not only stepped into his late father’s place as head of the family business but also into the arms of his widowed mother (Sheeba Chaddha). When the ghost of his father reveals that Claudius is responsible for his murder, Hamlet is consumed by the need for vengeance, forcing him to confront both the rot at the core of his family’s empire and the unraveling of his own mind.
From the opening somber moments of Hamlet bathing his father’s dead body as a Hindu priest intones the Bhagavad Gita, the pyre glowing in a West London crematorium, Karia establishes a vision that feels tight yet destabilizing. The handheld camerawork evokes the style and urban propulsion of the Safdie Brothers and at 114 minutes, the film unfolds almost entirely in real time, tied directly to Hamlet’s perspective. There are no cutaways to court intrigue, no deviations into subplots. We are witnesses to Hamlet’s journey, sharing his stress and pain over the course of what feels like a condensed period of time.
Karia and screenwriter Michael Lesslie retain Shakespeare’s words but pare them to the bone, folding Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into Laertes (Joe Alwyn), giving Ophelia (Morfydd Clark) a shade of Horatio, and streamlining Fortinbras (Jasmine Jobson). The result is immersive, and, crucially, accessible without compromise. No word is added, yet centuries of dust are blown away. In that regard, it is similar in its adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic material, as seen in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy Of Macbeth,” where the play is simplified to retain its most dramatic moments. Dialogue is abridged to give the audience something easier to digest, rather than something like Kenneth Branagh’s faithful and epically long 242-minute feature film adaptation.
Ahmed’s Hamlet begins in a spotless white tunic, which gradually grows dirtier, sweatier, and bloodier as the story progresses. His Hamlet is tormented, swaying back and forth between cerebral calculation and emotional recklessness. Ahmed has long dreamed of playing this role, and it shows in his performance. His “To be, or not to be” speech, shot in what appears to be one take from inside a car he’s driving ferociously fast with no hands into incoming traffic, is intense and deeply felt. He is both classical and bracingly contemporary, his breath carrying Shakespeare’s verse like a fighter carrying stamina into the final round, giving the film a sense of urgency that will hopefully grip younger audiences who may find Shakespeare’s words too dense to absorb in a classroom setting.
The Elsinore here is not a castle but a sprawling family mansion on the rural edges of London, home to an empire built on displacement and eviction. The play’s dynastic rot becomes a critique of capital and complicity, where familial betrayal and corporate corruption are one and the same. Art Malik’s Claudius is a commanding patriarch cloaked in power; Sheeba Chaddha brings layers of sorrow and denial to Gertrude; and Morfydd Clark crafts an Ophelia both delicate and resistant, her arc all the more devastating for her ties and affection for Hamlet. Each supporting turn feels freshly interpreted, never beholden to any traditions, allowing the actors to each deliver dramatic work that demands your attention.
Some moments hit with a ton of force: Hamlet’s rooftop encounter with his father’s ghost amid what is soon to be a gentrified city; the wedding sequence at a South Asian banquet hall, where ritual collides with seething rage and contempt from Hamlet; a brutal, accidental death in a bridal suite; and Ophelia’s collapse into grief and her brother Laertes’s equally devastated reaction to his own family tragedy. Many of Karia’s decisions help to keep this adaptation from feeling too “staged.” Instead, the story feels open and unconstricted.
If the film has any fatal flaws, one is that its intensity can at times feel unrelenting. Karia rarely allows a pause for air, and when he does, the silence feels suffocating rather than soothing. Yet that relentlessness may also be the point. Grief itself is suffocating, and this “Hamlet” is grief incarnate. The other flaw is one that some may bring with them into the experience, while others may not. It is still a classic story you either know directly or know based on other properties that have adapted it for their stories (“The Lion King,” anyone?). Because of this, despite Ahmed’s commanding performance and the direction from Karia, one still cannot help but feel that the film has a “been there, done that” quality to it, which no amount of changes or unique perspectives could overcome, which may result in this feeling like a grim, tedious exercise for some.
By setting the play in a British South Asian community, Ahmed and Karia don’t modernize Shakespeare so much as uncover how modern it already was. Themes of generational obligation, class disparity, and the spiritual world pressing against the material all resonate still to this day. And in giving us the first “Hamlet” film told with a predominantly non-white cast, the film reclaims the story as one that belongs to everyone. Thanks to Ahmed and Karia’s creative collaboration, this new version of a man caught between expectation and collapse, tradition and insurgency, love and fury will hopefully find its way to a new generation that has never experienced Shakespeare’s timeless story before.
