Following their Oscar-winning short, The Long Goodbye, Riz Ahmed and director Aneil Karia reunite for Hamlet, a bold reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Set not in Denmark’s royal courts but in a shadowy, throbbing, London that pulses with violence, betrayal, and moral decay. This not a Hamlet of soliloquies in candlelit castles; it’s one of dark alleyways, seedy, drug-fuelled nightclubs, and divided loyalties.
The film opens with Hamlet performing Hindu funeral rites for his father. The family is a modern British Asian dynasty whose empire, Elsinore Construction Group, gives a nod to Shakespeare’s castle and embodies both power and betrayal. The family’s empire, built on ill-gotten wealth by Hamlet’s father, feels tainted from the start.
From the opening frame, Hamlet is intense and deeply atmospheric. The dark London landscape feels less like a backdrop and more like an external reflection of Hamlet’s tortured mind; brooding, oppressive, and depressing. Ahmed and Karia create an experience that’s visually and emotionally heavy, and at times, visceral.
Image: BFI
Riz Ahmed’s performance captures the full spectrum of the character’s torment: grief, rage, and a rapid descent into insanity. There are also moments of vulnerability and sadness, exposing his fragile state of mind beneath the fury and desire for revenge. The film’s use of Shakespeare’s original dialogue fuses the poetic mastery of the Bard with the raw grittiness of a modern story of murder, greed, and vengeance.
One of the most striking sequences comes during the wedding of Gertrude and Claudius. Amid the dancing, music, and revelry, a choreographed performance, secretly altered by Hamlet, unfolds. As the dancers move, the principal performer starts to re-enact the murder of Hamlet’s father. The dramatic, heart-pounding scene plays out before a hall full of oblivious, cheering guests. Only Claudius recognises the subtext. Horror ripples across his face as the realisation dawns that Hamlet knows what he’s done, and Claudius plots to silence him.
Morfydd Clark’s Ophelia brings a haunting fragility, caught between unrequited love for Hamlet and the inescapable tragedy of her fate. Sheeba Chaddha’s Gertrude balances fleeting maternal warmth with silent complicity in her son’s downfall. Art Malik’s Claudius exudes a smooth, cold ruthlessness while Timothy Spall’s Polonius is re-cast as a menacing, gangster-like fixer, far from Shakespeare’s bumbling advisor. They are supported by Joe Alwyn’s Laertes who plays his part in the web of deception and betrayal that ensnares Hamlet.
The film doesn’t shy away from blood and violence, delivering brutal, harrowing moments that heighten the tension and the sense of threat and peril throughout.
It weaves culturally layered storytelling into Shakespeare’s linguistic framework and finds its own language; one that speaks to diasporic identity and the duality of living between cultures. The blending of Shakespearean verse with South Asian culture isn’t merely for effect; it’s thematic, reflecting the challenges of navigating family, duty, and belonging, in a fractured world.
However, this provocative fusion raises a question of who this film is for.
It’s an interpretation that will resonate with diverse audiences across cultures and tastes, and far beyond traditional Shakespeare audiences, as it’s not bound by era or language but reflects universal themes of power, pain, loss, but above all, because Hamlet is unforgettably human in his flaws and vulnerabilities.
The film has its European Premiere at the London Film Festival this month and will be released theatrically on 6 February 2026.