With this film, just about every strength that Kenneth Branagh boasted as the directorial storyteller of 'Henry V' has been ameliorated, and every flaw has been thinned out, but not to the point of dissipation, because as diluted as they are, the flaws of 'Henry V' can indeed be found within in this considerably superior film, which thankfully doesn't boast as many of the slow spots that did some damage to the engagement value of 'Henry V', yet nevertheless limps out a bit after a while, never slipping into dullness, but still having blandly excessive moments that retard your intrigue, though not quite as much as the staginess. Still, as much as this film is a considerable amount of time very well-spent, four hours is plenty of time to pick up some issues, as this film will tell you.

Actually, allow me to take that back, because I'm actually pretty terrified to see how long that film would be, and this film is a bit too long as it is, even though it essentially makes up for that by being just plain awesome.

Calm down, people, this film isn't quite 'Titanic', but it's certainly a whole lot better than 'Heavenly Creatures', which kind of makes me want to see what a Peter Jackson adaptation of a Shakespeare play would be like. Hey, as far as I'm concerned, if no one else is making some kind of an apology through this film, it's Kate Winslet, who I'm hoping was apologizing for the then-last film in which she played an especially crazy teenaged girl when she found out that the dramas that are actually over three hours long are much better than the films that feel like they run over three hours. Branagh just has to be apologizing for something pertaining to his 'Henry V', because if his going so far as to cast Derek Jacobi as King Claudius, a man who our protagonist aims to kill brutally, isn't symbolism for him dethroning Jacobi as star of the longest adaptation of 'Hamlet', then it's because he even got annoyed seeing Jacobi pop up from out of nowhere as the onscreen narrator of 'Henry V'. Actually, maybe this film is supposed to be Branagh's answer to the overt faithfulness to Olivier's 'Henry V' of his last Shakespeare adaptation, because Branagh is not only neglecting to go the black-and-white route that Olivier took (Four hours of Shakespearean dialogue is torturous enough to the ignorant, contemporaneous philistines who helped this film not get a buck), but setting this version of Shakespeare's vision ahead a couple of centuries, and pretty much doing the same thing with the runtime. Four hours of hardcore Shakespeare, it better be good, Kenny, and sure enough, it is, being much better that Laurence Olivier's 'Hamlet', just as Kenneth Branagh had ostensibly hoped it would be.

Hamlet movie