Grand Theft Hamlet is not what it says on the tin. Opening shots of landscape simulacra make readily apparent the aesthetic promise of staging a production of The Danish Play in the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto, but the film wastes no time in shortchanging that premise. A title card quickly places us in the UK’s third COVID lockdown, and we watch as two out-of-work actors kill time in “a violent and beautiful virtual world where anything is possible…” One of them — being chased by the police through the game’s city of Los Santos — stumbles into the Vinewood Bowl, an outdoor amphitheater modeled after the more famous one nestled in the Hollywood Hills. Directors Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls too rarely show the results of the experiment that followed — which won them the innovation prize at the 2023 Stage Awards — opting instead to document the journey of its creation.
The film has been widely categorized as a documentary, but setting aside the transparent staging of many ostensibly intimate moments, Grand Theft Hamlet has been modeled after the buddy comedy, with a little heist movie thrown in. Long sequences follow Sam and his buddy Mark Oosterveen as they (aided and documented by Pinny on the sidelines) attempt to recruit actors within the notoriously violent game. Colorful characters emerge from the woodwork, either killing and looting the digital thespians, leaving the game mid-soliloquy, or finally taking a genuine interest.
The makeshift cast begins rehearsals, frequently interrupted by shootouts and SWAT units. As the actors start to get jobs in the real world, they have less and less time for the game, much to the chagrin of the still-unemployed Sam and Mark. Doubt and resentment enter their minds, and they clash because any good buddy comedy tests the fraternity of the central pair. Sam also argues with Pinny — his life partner, who’s beginning to feel that the boys are obsessed — and her concerns are neither alleviated nor validated by the film, which returns to business as usual immediately afterward. Sam hypes himself to step into the main role by reciting “To Be or Not to Be” in a dive bar as treacly music heralds his digital self-actualization.
By this point, withholding the performance of the play feels not only misjudged, but downright smug and self-serving. Sequences of the cast discovering dynamic ways to stage certain scenes only remind us how awesome it would be if we could just see the play already. Grand Theft Hamlet, the movie, is less an earnest experiment with Shakespeare’s ageless malleability than it is a victory lap for people who felt shafted by the theater world (the inclusion of an unsuccessful phone call to National Theatre Live’s Head of Digital feels particularly petty); the final sequence skips through the highlights of the virtual performance as it races toward footage of their big awards win. The overall effect is not one of generosity and collaboration — as a more committed depiction of the production (and more experimental incorporation of the circumstances surrounding it) might have been — but rather of two artists exploiting and mythologizing their underdog story in real-time.
DIRECTOR: Pinny Grylls & Sam Crane; DISTRIBUTOR: MUBI; IN THEATERS: January 17; STREAMING: February 21; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 29 min.
Published as part of January 2025 Review Roundup
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