All the fans of the original “Wuthering Heights” novel are laughing at all the “Hamlet” lovers getting zero warning that the 2025 rendition of Shakespeare’s beloved tragedy starring Riz Ahmed decided to take a “24” approach to the play and condense all the onscreen and off-screen action to three days without all the pesky monologues then changing the order that lines are said for funsies. Then the one action scene gets reduced to a quiet evening at home with murder. Perhaps someone should have approached writer Michael Lesslie and director Aneil Karia and informed them that if they were going to depart from the original so much, they could have at least made their concoction better. Come eager for the British South Asian spin on the beloved play. Leave because it somehow turns Hamlet into the villain.

Being unfamiliar with Ahmed’s work, it is hard to tell if the fault solely lies with the men behind the camera, and Ahmed did the best that he could with the unrefusable shot of a lifetime or he bears some responsibility for how disappointing this rendition is. This film turns the source material into a one-man show and only tells the story from his perspective. Hamlet has always been a volatile character, but this version turns him into a more unreliable narrator than most. To put it mildly, even if offered some grace for losing his father, this Hamlet is not the kind of guy that you would even want to mourn with, but expanding the time between seeing his dad and acting up and without the supporting characters that usually humanize him, he just seems like a jerk who also happens to be having a bad day and is discovering that it is broken clock day so he is the only one who knows a wedding should not immediately follow a funeral.

Hamlet would fit right into “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” (2026) without the sense of humor. He is depicted as the hard partying Londoner who gets drunk and takes drugs to deal with grief instead of just mad with grief. Combined with three days without sleep, Hamlet’s quest seems more like an episode of psychosis or the toxic family member whose wealth bails him out of consequences for his reckless behavior: public humiliation of his girlfriend, murder, and drunk driving, which almost ran several vehicles off the road. Directors usually depict Hamlet as physically abusing his mom, but here, it feels as if he could have killed her. Depicting Hamlet as problematic is an innate part of production, but this rendition puts the thumb on the scale of a spoiled, rich bad boy. It makes Polonius seem reasonable for gritting his teeth throughout his obsequiousness.

I don’t recall Ahmed in “Girls” or “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (2016), but I do remember enjoying his performance as the villain in “Venom” (2018) because the character was written as the usual tech bro, and it was a relief that it did not go old school Hollywood racism and find a subtle way to extrapolate an individual’s problem into a general statement about South Asian people. I’ll defer to South Asian movie critics, but I’m not sure if I felt the same watching “Hamlet,” which was shocking considering that I expected a majority South Asian cast playing most of the roles so it would not be an issue. The South Asian actors are relegated to the margins even as major supporting characters like Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha) and Claudius (Art Malik) in an adaptation that refuses to remain faithful to the original. The problem is not the presence of Joe Alwyn as a vague Laertes, Timothy Spall as a secretly racist Polonius, or Morfydd Clark as the most stable and mature Ophelia ever. It is the fact that it feels like Brexit’s Hamlet.

To be clear, an adaptation does not have to adhere to the letter of the original. It can adhere to the spirit. The 2025 movie does neither without proclaiming in the promotion, which at least Emerald Fennell had the decency to do, that Shakespeare’s play only provided the inspiration. The real point of this film is to decry corruption in the construction business, Elsinore, so instead of two warring kingdoms (Norway and Denmark), it is the haves versus the impoverished have nots that presumably Hamlet’s father (Avijit Dutt) and Claudius kicked out of their affordable homes for profit. The film does not wrestle with dad’s complicitness or center the have nots except superficially so Fortinbras can make a brief appearance and rescue Hamlet from a couple of Claudius’ thugs. So the family no longer has a bad apple that corrupted a kingdom, but perhaps unintentionally links it to the murder victim and more systematic. I love the idea of highlighting the issue of lack of affordability housing, but um, is that a suitable, contemporary parallel for the power dynamics in the original play?

At least Malik made his wickedness unique. Claudius’ reaction to Hamlet’s murder of Polonius (spoiler) was the most riveting, counterintuitive reimagining. The soft-spoken villain is a cliché, but Malik took it to a whole new level with a display of tenderness which could be mistaken for a complete shift in the character. It is not, but it is an underexplored nuance to remind movie goers that Hamlet is his nephew. Chaddha’s interpretation of the merry widow is the most maternal rendition without a whiff of incest between mother and child. It was also nice to get a couple that looked mature and not as if they were Hamlet’s contemporaries. Otherwise, the rest of the cast seemed too old for their roles. If the entire movie took such subtle moves with each of their characters and understood that varying the tone instead of staying at a ten for almost two hours, maybe it would not be so boring. If you do not fall asleep, it will be because the environment is so vibrant and detailed. The first day features Hindu funeral rites. The second day is the wedding of Claudius and Polonius with the play as part of the reception, but instead of a play, it is a Kathak dance troupe, who are the real MVP of “Hamlet” and better than the whole movie. What is the function of having visible South Asian cultural elements combined with a more violent and volatile take on the story?

Maybe it is not that deep. Lesslie is a bit of a hit or miss writer. The 2015 “Macbeth” was gorgeous to watch and dull to play with the sound on. You can call Roman Polanski a convicted child rapist who deserves to be behind bars, but his films are not boring, especially his 1971 take on the Scottish king.  Lesslie did not fare much better with a video game adaptation with “Assassin’s Creed” (2016), which was only watchable because of Fassbender and an excellent cast. “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” (2023) was the excellent exception in his IMDb credits so adapting young adult novels seems to be his forte. (I still have not seen “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” and have no interest in it, but people love it so I could be wrong.)

Save your money and watch Michael Almereyda’s 2000 film starring Ethan Hawke if you want a contemporary spin on a classic or “Hamnet” (2025) if you want a classic inspired film. This 2025 adaptation may even be worse than “Scarlet” (2025), an animated, gender bended, fantasy take on the premise.