Hamlet (dir. Aneil Karia)

by Jack Martin | Feb 8, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 113 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 6 February 2026

WHO’S IN HAMLET?

Riz Ahmed, Art Malik, Joe Alwyn, Timothy Spall, Morfydd Clark, Sheeba Chaddha, Avijit Dutt

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Aneil Karia (director), Michael Lesslie (writer, producer), Riz Ahmed, Allie Moore, Tommy Oliver and James Wilson (producers), Maxwell Sterling (composer), Stuart Bentley (cinematographer), Amanda James and Mikkel E.G. Nielsen (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Hamlet (Ahmed) sets out to avenge the death of his father…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON HAMLET?

Despite his many achievements as an actor, and for my money one of the best to be currently working, it’s surprisingly easy to forget that Riz Ahmed has also won an Oscar. He and filmmaker Aneil Karia were awarded a statuette each for their short film The Long Goodbye, a harrowing piece of dystopian suburban horror that somehow becomes more and more relevant as the years go on, especially in the wake of the recent ICE atrocities, and gives Ahmed a golden opportunity to perform at the top of his game under Karia’s incredibly tense direction.

It’s no wonder why both were so keen to work together again so soon, this time on a feature that just so happens to be adapting one of the most famous plays ever written, which features a lead character so emotionally complex that he’s seen as an actor’s dream role. Needless to say, an actor of such high calibre as Ahmed is perfectly suited for the role of Hamlet, and as with The Long Goodbye, his and Karia’s take on Shakespeare’s eponymous play is a gripping and fascinatingly tightened rendition that recontextualises key aspects with a daring and at times unbearably nerve-racking sentimentality.

Adapted by screenwriter Michael Lesslie, this version of Hamlet more or less follows the traditional plot, only here the setting has been relocated to modern-day London, where Ahmed’s titular protagonist is the son of a wealthy property developer (Avijit Dutt) who has just unexpectedly died. While Hamlet is deep in mourning, he is shocked to find that his uncle Claudius (Art Malik) has not only taken over the family business but has made plans to imminently remarry his late brother’s widow Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha). Adding on top of all that, Hamlet is visited by his father’s ghost who reveals that he was murdered by Claudius and that he must be avenged, causing the emotionally unstable young man to spiral out of control as his desire for revenge causes woe and misery for all, including his closest friend Laertes (Joe Alwyn) and his sister Ophelia (Morfydd Clark), both the children of Claudius’s right-hand man Polonius (Timothy Spall).

Since Hamlet is my personal favourite Shakespeare play, having studied it and even performed it during school, it was an interesting exercise in identifying the changes made for this particular adaptation. Of course, it would be impossible to cram the entire five-act play into a nearly two-hour movie (Kenneth Branagh’s version proves that it takes at least four hours to properly get through the entire thing on-screen), so Lesslie’s script understandably takes more than a few liberties, from entirely removing the comic relief duo of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to rearranging entire chunks of certain monologues (don’t worry, the iconic “to be or not to be” soliloquy is left intact). Luckily, Lesslie maintains the core emotional essence of the original text, with much of it translating pretty well to today’s world as well as a vibrant British South Asian subculture, reinforcing the timelessness and universality of Shakespeare’s words.

One of the more interesting alterations made by the screenwriter, and one that both Karia and Ahmed really benefit from, is the entire thing being told exclusively from the perspective of Hamlet himself. In the play, Hamlet is noticeably absent in certain scenes and sometimes entire acts, but here Ahmed is practically on-screen at all times, with Karia placing the viewer right alongside his Hamlet as he goes on this journey of the soul, right up to the ending that we all know is coming. Ahmed is powerfully understated in the role, pulling the viewer in with his withdrawn melancholy while making it entirely plausible that his rendition of Hamlet could genuinely explode at any moment, especially during the aforementioned “to be or not to be” scene which could almost give one a panic attack from the way it’s shot and executed. Karia, meanwhile, continues to expand on filmmaking sensibilities seen not just in The Long Goodbye but also in his rather underrated previous feature Surge, following Ahmed’s Hamlet around with a fierce sense of immediacy and gritty energy that the director, equipped with Stuart Bentley’s handheld cinematography, captures as though this ageless story is being told for the first time.

Not everything about this version of Hamlet works. The stern focus on Hamlet’s perspective unfortunately robs some of the other more prominent characters of their own complexities, including Claudius who, thanks to the removal of his humanising third act monologue (and despite Art Malik’s undeniable magnetism in the part), is a bit more of a blank slate here. The same goes for Ophelia, who’s given a slightly repurposed role here to allow Morfydd Clark a bit more to do, such as her being the one whom Hamlet confides early on about his ghostly encounter instead of the absent Horatio (who himself has been composited into Joe Alwyn’s Laertes), but it’s not enough to expand upon a character who unfortunately was always somewhat underdeveloped. There are also a couple of new additions, including a brief sub-plot involving a homeless camp at the abandoned building site owned by Hamlet’s family business, but while such things touch upon wider themes of corruption and greed, they either go nowhere or are forgotten entirely by the final shot.

It may not be a spot-on adaptation of Shakespeare’s greatest masterpiece, but Aneil Karia and Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet is a fiery reinterpretation that cuts to the core of the tragedy while adding something new to the timeless tale of a vengeful Danish prince.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Hamlet is a vivid reinterpretation of the classic Shakespeare play that alters certain details, sometimes to diminishing effect, but retains the emotional core thanks to director Aneil Karia’s urgent filmmaking and a captivating central turn by Riz Ahmed.