Brilliant and thrilling and as mad as its protagonist, Branagh's film deserves to be seen again and again. And more than that, it is the best Hamlet I have ever seen on film: better than Olivier's reductive 'man who could not make up his mind' interpretation better than Tony Richardson's 1969 film with Anthony Hopkins miscast as Claudius to Nicol Williamson's Hamlet (although Hopkins is actually a year older than Williamson, he looked about 10 years younger in 1969, and Claudius should really look noticeably older than Hamlet) better than Zefferelli's version with crazy Mel Gibson pretending to be sane better than the tame 1980s PBS film with Kevin Kline better than the Ethan Hawke 'Wall Street Hamlet' with Sam Shepard as the Ghost (providing the best scene in the movie, by far).

Now, having just finished watching the pristine DVD release, I wonder what kind of bad weed I was smoking back in '96. I thought it was OK but too long, had too many cameos and was too much of a Kenneth Branagh Experience.

When I first saw Kenneth Branagh's 4-hour 'full text' version of Hamlet during its initial theatrical release in 1996, I was not overly impressed.

Hamlet full movie 1996