Film review: when is a Hamlet not a Hamlet?

Image created by Finn Souter with photo by GRuban, 2018, of Riz Ahmed. CC BY-SA 4.0 and London cityscape by Tim Arterbury at Unsplash

Sophie Winch reviews a bold Hamlet, exploring family, power, and revenge in urban London

If you’ve ever pictured Shakespeare in the gritty streets of contemporary London, the 2026 film Hamlet, starring Riz Ahmed and directed by Aneil Karia, might be exactly that. Drawing on his north-west London roots, Ahmed brings something raw and visceral to the role. As Riz Ahmed told Bollyspice, ‘Hamlet feels […] most alive when placed within a community like ours.’

I first heard Ahmed talk about the project, on the radio and it instantly caught my attention. Words like ‘radical reinvention’, ‘hip-hop’, ‘South Asian modern London’ and ‘passion project’ popped up and then ‘Hamlet’. I actually did a double-take in my seat.

I’m a bit of a nerd about Hamlet. I studied it at A-Level, learnt all the soliloquies, watched too many productions and get inordinately excited whenever The Bad Quarto comes out into the Treasures room in the British Library again (a famously messy early version of the play, if you get a chance, it is wonderfully bad). My first thought on hearing the premise of Aneil Karia’s film was a stuffy purist’s one – but wouldn’t that risk completely missing the point?

Karia’s Hamlet, though set in twenty-first-century England, is not a gore-soaked parody of the TV drama The Crown. Elsinore is no longer the mediaeval Danish town of Helsignør, where Shakespeare set his royal court, but a wealthy corporation of disconcertingly ambiguous intent, owned by a South-Asian Hindu family. Questions of inheritance, always central to the play, are fundamentally different now; they are not about power over Denmark, but about coming into corporate wealth.

Seeing a formally suited man bleed out in a warehouse, or at the end of a broken bottle, hits a lot harder

A pressure-cooker of a Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) is poised to inherit Elsinore from his father (played with moving nuance and stoicism by Avijit Dutt), alongside most of the usual characters, though with some twists. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are gone. Ophelia has amalgamated with Horatio, a surprisingly successful change necessitated by the modernised environment.

We see less of Polonius’ death-grip on Ophelia and every single one of her behaviours, because we see less of anyone who isn’t Hamlet, viewing the court exclusively through his eyes. Don’t worry though, this is an unusually likeable Hamlet.

I doubt I’m alone in feeling a bit emotionally detached watching stylised swordfights in jerkins. Seeing a formally suited man bleed out in a warehouse, or at the end of a broken bottle, packs a lot more of a punch (or stab). Chris Oddy’s, production designer, choice of location is excellent, with instantly familiar motorways that had the people next to me in the cinema murmuring in recognition. Karia reinvigorates the feeling of Hamlet — the shock of any of it happening at all.

The setting also reshapes the characters. Inheriting Elsinore no longer gives Claudius control over Denmark, so he is motivated more by money than power. Freed from some of the societal constraints of the seventeenth century, Ophelia makes her own choice in supporting her father, which may make her an even more compelling character.

Fortinbras, the hot-headed Norwegian prince intent on storming Elsinore, has become the name of the rebel organisation in the underbelly of London. Its dirty cluster of small tents evokes other small tents, becoming a visual symbol of the underdog. Your sympathies for Fortinbras are likely to shift; Fortinbras the prince wants Denmark, and Fortinbras the rebel organisation wants the land they used to live on before Elsinore took it.

This Hamlet tackles contemporary issues while keeping the defiant spirit of the original

Riz Ahmed says that Hamlet is about oppression and his Hamlet certainly is. Even the character of Hamlet changes; he is more interested in toppling the corrupt Elsinore than inheriting it for himself. While this might endear him to the audience, I’d also like to mention — we are no longer in a time of honourable duels and eye-for-an-eye culture! Anyone who revenge-kills someone in twenty-first-century central London is definitely more bloodthirsty than is generally deemed socially normal (even if he dithers over it).

Where does this leave the bones of the original Hamlet? Nowhere, in the case of poor Yorick, a victim to the cutting-room floor (and cremation). With Hamlet himself switching black for white Hindu mourning garb, and the iconic skull gone, the visual language of this Hamlet is very different.

Notably, though, the Players re-enact the death of Old Hamlet in a beautiful fusion of old and new; the image of Claudius watching the play remains timelessly recognisable, amidst a crescendoing Hindu dance performance.

So many of the central issues have changed, each line of Shakespeare’s script is entirely recontextualised. Is this a bad thing, though? Shakespeare’s Hamlet was dangerously topical, a rebuttal to the sycophancy of the royal court and the uncertainty of a shift to a new ruler.

This Hamlet deals with contemporary issues, preserving the defiant spirit of the original. It is a provocative and gripping film in itself, but it is hard to find many of the central messages of Hamlet in it. Then again, haven’t these always shifted? If art is meant to hold a mirror up to nature, each reinterpretation of this story of fratricide, revenge and inheritance (thought to originate in the 12th century Danish legend of Amleth) is an important reflection of its time and its makers.

The actor Laurence Olivier, in his 1948 screen adaptation of Hamlet, believed it was the tragedy of a man who coudn’t make up his mind. Shakespeare (at least in part) wrote it to address the corruption in the court.

And Karia’s Hamlet, with its multi-cultural world of mega-corporations, capitalism, and oppression, is a Hamlet for today.

Watch the trailer here 🔥⤵