But I digress and although the only Shakespeare I studied at school was 'Macbeth' the story of 'Hamlet' is so well known that I am familiar with the basics. In fact as I watched 'Hamlet' I found my mind frequently meandering off, thinking of other more productive and enjoyable things I could be doing with my time rather than enduring this and counting the minutes down to its finish. Now I have admitted in the past my knowledge of Shakespeare would be an embarrassment to some and that is mainly down to the lousy British education system of the 1980s when they might as well done away with teachers as all we ever did was learn from the textbook which wasn't inspiring. Unfortunately whilst Luhrman managed to make this idea almost work I can't say that I have the same feeling about Michael Almereyda's condensed update of 'Hamlet' which uses the original dialogue and so on but places the story in a modern New York City.

Whilst I had issues with Baz Luhrman's 'Romeo + Juliet' I liked the idea of taking a Shakespeare's play and his dialogue and then shifting it to a modern or alternative setting.

Ethan hawke hamlet full movie