Hamlet (1990) on Netflix
Hamlet learns from his father's ghost that his uncle Claudius murdered the king and married his mother, Gertrude. Ophelia's father, Polonius, urges her to break off with Hamlet.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.7/1025,250 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
Denmark's king is dead, and the throne has passed to his brother Claudius, who has also married the queen, Gertrude. Gertrude's son, Hamlet, the prince, is told by the ghost of his father that Claudius murdered him to get the crown, and the ghost asks Hamlet to take revenge on his uncle. The ghost also asks him to leave Gertrude alone, saying that she is innocent of the killing. Hamlet begins to work out how he will take that revenge. In the meantime Ophelia, the woman he has been courting, is persuaded by her father, Polonius, to put an end to their relationship.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hamlet (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Franco Zeffirelli cast Mel Gibson after watching the scene in Lethal Weapon in which Gibson's character, Martin Riggs, contemplates suicide.
- Gibson, who had grown up idolizing his co-star, the legendary Shakespearean actor Paul Scofield, compared the experience of performing Shakespeare alongside him to being "thrown into the ring with Mike Tyson".
- Nelson Entertainment, which held the North American distribution rights, licensed theatrical exhibition to Warner Bros. as part of an incentive to lure Gibson into making Lethal Weapon 3, and sold Warner the home video rights too despite owning its own video arm.
- An hour-long educational video titled Mel Gibson Goes Back to School was released alongside the film, showing the actor lecturing on Hamlet to a group of high-school students in Los Angeles.
- Scholar J. Lawrence Guntner suggested that Zeffirelli's cinematography borrows heavily from the action film genre that made Gibson famous, noting that the film's average shot length is less than six seconds.
