Hamlet tales are a dime a dozen. Hell, At TIFF 2025 there were at least 3 inspired or adapted movies screening at the festival. There’s no shortage of the melancholic prince spouting off famed monologues and plotting to avenge his father. With this many versions of the same tale occurring so often, we’e left wondering do we really NEED another reimagining? That is the question, I’m pressed to say no as this latest Hamlet can’t quite shuffle off its mortal coil to be and is probably better not to be. The rub, however, is that while it never quite justifies its existence it works hard to try some new perspectives while wholly embracing the old english text as its dialogue. Riz Ahmed is a lightning rod, firing on all cylinders and fueling every moment of this tale as old as time.

Written by Michael Lesslie and directed by Aneil Karia, Hamlet is set in a southeast asian community in London. It unfolds with a gritty texture as it moves from elite society the criminal underworld and everything in between. Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) traverses the world in turmoil, wrestling with his family’s own complicity in their rotting city and class disparity as he reels from his father’s death and plots revenge on those responsible. Hamlet also stars Ark Malik, Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn, Timothy Spall and Sheeba Chaddha.

What is Left To Say about Hamlet?

It’s hard to say too much about this latest rendition of Hamlet, largely because there isn’t all that much new to talk about. Sure, it has grit. A raw visual flare bursting from Stuart Bentley’s cinematography and an infectiously unsettling score. Ahmed goes for broke here and is the charged battery that keeps this retelling moving. But even for everything he gives to the role, you can’t help but feel like he’s portraying the character with more gusto than nuance. Hamlet adaptions often struggle with this, truly tapping into the complexity of the story buried underneath the rubble of revenge. Just keeping the old english language to tell a modern version isn’t really diving into the deeper aspects of each character.

Clark’s Ophelia is a perfect example of this. Often the most difficult character to properly adapt, this Hamlet opts to not even attempt to grant her any agency or purpose. She’s relegated to a woman in constant distress, brushed aside to the fringes of the story until Karia needs to capture some her more iconic freak outs. Clark is innocent here, imbuing Opheiia with an almost laughable amount of neurosis but clearly at the direction of Karia. Ahmed plays Hamlet with a tremendous amount of introspection, keeping himself toned down emotionally but filled with a smoldering intensity behind his searching and mistrusting eyes. He comes alive when it counts, namely the during the famous To Be or Not to Be monologue and the surprise performance restructured to out his dubious uncle. You can certainly feel how much the role of Hamlet means to Ahmed and you can feel how proud he is to finally perform it on the big screen.

For all its grittiness and grungy street level modernization, Hamlet never feels organically propulsive. It all feels manufactured and sometimes shallow, even with the poetic language being spoken and Ahmed sinking his teeth into the titular character. With so many versions out there, the only way to truly be successful as a film adaption is to stand out and be memorable. Unfortunately, this Hamlet doesn’t quite get there, falling somewhere in the middle of solid attempts but nowhere near the better versions. I am huge Shakespeare head, so I will always be seated for as many adaptions as filmmakers want to make. And of course if it stars Riz Ahmed, you can count me in to be double seated as I think he may be one of the most underrated actors working today.

There’s enough good things going for Hamlet that makes it worth a watch. It may not be the best adaption out there and tries a little too hard to blend its classic spoken word with a modernized examination of class and southeast asian communities. But when it works – namely when Ahmed is given his moments to shine bright – it really hums and may even convert a few Shakespeare haters to fans.

Can confirm: this is in fact.Hamlet starring Riz Ahmed.