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By Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown is a senior writer for EW and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio -- he has the tote bag to prove it

HAMLET Ethan Hawke, Julia Stiles (2000, Miramax, 111 mins., R, also on DVD) Remember Hamlet? The disaffected young video diarist with the post-grunge wardrobe, the swank Manhattan pad, the bottomless Blockbuster late-fee account -- and, yes, the mother issues? But no skulls, no crumbling parapets, not in director Michael Almereyda's chill, downsized adaptation, which translates perfectly to the small screen: The action feels as if it's taking place on the security cameras that dot the ''Denmark Corporation'' like so many wasp's nests. That's only apropos, as there's plenty to be paranoid about: The CEO is dead, with his wife and company usurped by a treacherous brother. Now it's up to the murdered mogul's son (Hawke) to set things right. Fat chance of that: This Hamlet's tragic inaction is compounded by the slacker apathy of a media-saturated age both relentlessly material and vaguely unreal, an ADD-addled world where vengeance waits on Eartha Kitt's recorded voice in the back of a taxicab, and the memory of a great man that almost certainly won't outlast his life by half a year. A


Posted Apr 27, 2001 | Published in issue #593 Apr 27, 2001 | Order Article Reprints