When you put Hamlet into the search engine on the IMDb over 50 matches turn up. Which brings me to my first question does the world really need another adaptation of Hamlet ? My second question is " Does there need to be another adaptation that has a modern setting in Derry, Northern Ireland ". My answer to both is NO. But unfortunately Director/Producer/Cinematographer/screen writer and leading actor Stephen Cavanagh says yes. The result is these 93 minutes of excruciating bad acting that is accompanied by painfully bad cinematography that was the cause of giving me a bad headache. After seeing this it is becomes blatantly clear that every one on the production side of this film Mr. Cavanagh, Keith O'Grady, Richard Hughes & Ellen Factor (yes that is all that is credited) are so much out of their depth and very inexperienced to bring such a complicated text such as Hamlet to the big screen. I can safely say that William Shakespeare must be turning in his grave.
The story remains the same the twist is that Hamlet is now an avid filmmaker from Derry. Its cinematography style is a documentary style that is shot in a similar fashion to the Blair Witch project. To shot a very similar style to the Blair Witch Project was a suicidal move on behalf of the film makers because of the transparent amateurish attitude of the film makers that the chosen style of the Blair witch should make it appealing to audiences. This backfires badly and inevitability shows that the makers never fully thought out the consequences of shooting in such an elaborate style and the requirement of having one fully committed person who would take responsibility of being cinematographer. A consistent tone with accompany imagery would have been established and it might have saved the film from the fate of my review. Instead we have three untrained individuals. Therefore we attain three very different interpretations of the text.
The acting is okay. It does not help that the accents are of a heavy northern Irish dialect, which is sometimes very hard to decipher. The only real talent to emerge from the film is Simone Kirby. She is consistent in her portrayal of Ophelia. Cavanagh as Hamlet once again is another let down to a film that was already doomed. You get the feeling every time he is on the screen that he thinks he knows better about the text than anyone else. But his performance says otherwise.
Overall it is a terrible adaptation of a Shakespearean text. It is quite obvious from the outset that there were some serious delusions of grandeur on behalf of the Director/Writer/Producer/Cinematographer and lead actor Cavanagh. If he was to drop 4 out of the 5 positions he held then maybe he might have had some objectivity and the film might have been very different. He should also acknowledge that he is no Brannagh or Olivier and he never will be. A terribly bad product that gives independent Irish films a bad name. 1 out of 10.
