4 Star

Forgetful Duo and Hamlet.

Tom Stoppard‘s directorial début of the book which he wrote about the lesser featured participants of the classic Shakespeare play Hamlet. This 25th anniversary edition comes with more than 3 hours worth of bonus material on a second disk. I watched the DVD version of the film using a Blu-ray player which upgrades the replay and it was still grainy that is why it gets 4 stars instead of 5* as the performances by Oldman, Roth and Dreyfuss are just a delight to watch.

Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman, The Dark Knight Rises, State of Grace) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth, Klondike) are on the road, just chewing the fat and working out the Laws of probability by flipping a gold coin over and over again, 175 times to make sure of a thorough range of results and every time it landed heads.

Half the time they don’t even know which one of them is Rosencrantz or who is Guildenstern, but Guildenstern thinks he is the more intelligent of the duo and is always having a dig at his childhood friend about his forgetfulness.

On their travels a large wagon with people pushing it and leading the horses stops in front of them and their leader (Richard Dreyfuss, Very Good Girls, Paranoia) jumps down and presents himself and his troupe of players, now that they have an audience.

Love, Blood and Retoric

Our hapless  duo are summoned to the King of Denmark’s palace at all haste. Once they are there they find out that they have been called because Hamlet (Iain Glen, Game of Thrones) has become afflicted after the death of his father. King Claudius (Donald Sumpter, The Mill) and his wife Queen Gertrude (Joanna Miles, The Sound of Murder) tell them that they are to find the reason for Hamlets ailments and if they are successful they will have the Kings remembrance.

But our erstwhile prince is being tight lipped about what ails him and you can see something behind his eyes that says that he is still in there or is he just hiding.

The main part of this film is the interaction between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as Roth and Oldman enjoy their days at work and see Rosencrantz invent everything from Newtons cradle, the helicopter as well as experiments like the ball and feather and water displacement. Sit back and spend some fun time, while it lasts, with the best friends of Hamlet.

Available to Order Online Now.