Grand Theft Hamlet (15) |Close-Up Film Review

For those who like me are not familiar with the video game revolution, Grand Theft Auto is one such game, set in a virtual version of the rougher area of Los Angeles, in which the objective appears to be to steal cars and kill people. That I think is how you get points. 

Back in the boring days of Covid isolation playing this video game was how actor friends Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen passed the time when confined to their homes.  Probably to a certain degree of annoyance from Sam’s film director wife Pinny Grylls.  

One day when cruising around the game they came across a deserted amphitheatre – huge stage and large auditorium – and being actors they put their avatars on stage and acted out a few speeches from Hamlet.  It attracted the attention of a few other avatars, who, seeing as there were no cars on view to nick, shot the actors for fun.  But it also gave Sam and Mark an idea.   “Let’s do the show right here in the video game.”

And they did. They put out a call to other players to come and audition.  Some took it seriously, some came along just to shoot the directors – with a virtual gun of course, not a camera.  But eventually the project was cast, took shape and they rehearsed and performed the first ever virtual Hamlet.  Fairly early on in the project Pinny and Sam decided to record the whole project and this documentary is the result.

And there’s never been a documentary like it.  It’s totally original, totally engrossing and often laugh out loud funny.

Sam’s avatar is a bit of a rough looking guy with punky green hair and muscles, Mark’s is rather more restrained and good looking.   As for the rest of the cast, both those who took it seriously and played a role in the play and also the gun toting drop ins, the avatars vary from more t-shirted punks to a really cool guy in a top hat and long shorts, some very feisty looking women and an alien from outer space. 

The directors decided to branch out from the amphitheatre location and set scenes all over this virtual Los Angeles.   So there are also lots of car chases, action sequences (think last act of Hamlet itself indeed) and even a shootout with the cops.  Although I’ve never played a video game, I have seen examples of the art work on some, which can be really beautiful, if the game is in say a mediaeval setting or similar.  Here beautiful it ain’t.   It’s rough and ugly like the real life downtown LA – and visually very exciting.

As a documentary this is an entertaining and totally different development of the genre.   It does though implicitly raise the rather disturbing question, could this actually be the future of the cinema, another aspect of the larger question, will technology kill cinema as we know it?   Actors and directors working from home, creating their stories in a virtual world.   And audiences never stirring from their living room sofas.   We’ll all lose the use of our legs!

Grand Theft Hamlet is exclusively on MUBI from February 21st