Mostmovies based on video gameshave a long and spotty track record that runs the gamut from the terrible (2024’sBorderlands) to the slightly less terrible (2022’sUncharted). However, movies that take place within a video game as it’s being played by actual players is a genre that, at the moment, consists primarily of 2024’sKnit’s IslandandThe Remarkable Life of Ibelin. To that short list we can add co-directors Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s documentary,Grand Theft Hamlet,a hilarious and even touching COVID-era chroniclethat follows two unemployed British actors coping with the loneliness and creative boredom of lockdown by mounting a production of Shakespeare’sHamletwithin the world ofGrand Theft AutoOnline.
The film whittles down 300hours ofGTAOnline gameplay to a tight 91 minutes where Crane and fellow unemployed thespian Mark Oosterveen walk, run, drive, fly, punch, and shoot their way through the game’s crime-infested version of Los Angeles while recruiting a troupe ofGTAOnline gamers willing to participate in this unusual staging of the Bard’s most famous work. Grylls and Crane mine big laughs from the disconnect between Shakespeare’s immortal words and the players tasked with reciting them, including the Tunisian-Finnish man whose avatar looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
They also take full advantage ofGTAOnline’s near-limitless world as they tackle in-game and IRL challenges in dozens of gorgeously rendered, virtual locations navigable in Rockstar Games' masterpiece. This is not a doc that can be dismissed as merely an elaborate Twitch stream.It’sa boldly imagined work of cartoonish humor and light melancholy about the need for purpose and creative fulfillment, even as COVID was possibly ushering in the end of the world.
‘Grand Theft Hamlet’ Brings Up Painful COVID Memories
Grand Theft Hamlet
Grand Theft Hamlet is a 2024 film where two unemployed friends attempt to stage Shakespeare’s Hamlet within the virtual realm of Grand Theft Auto. The movie unfolds as a humorous and surreal narrative, blending classic literature with the chaotic world of the video game.
Don’t be surprised if painful memories of lockdown flood backas Oosterveen and Crane useGTAOnline to escape their suffocating COVID confines and explore an entire virtual world. Even the game’s ubiquitous, cathartic, and disturbing violence has its purpose, taking them away “from the crushing inevitability of your own life.” For Oosterveen, that life does not include a significant other nor any children, which makes their project an important distraction and mental health maintenance tool. Crane does have a wife and kids, and when he and Oosterveen decide to hold in-game auditions for their Hamlet production, he enlists Grylls, his documentarian wife, to join the game (she initially wanted her avatar to looklike Tilda Swinton), record it and make a film out of it.
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This, of course, means that theGrylls certainly missed at least the birth of their crazy scheme, since it’s doubtful she started recording until after the idea was hatched in 2021 during the third COVIDlockdown. That lightning bolt of inspiration strikes when Crane (whose avatar is a badass dude with a zero-fade haircut) and Oosterveen (more normal in his beige puffer jacket) happen upon the in-game Vinewood Bowl amphitheater and begin an impromptu reading of Hamlet’s “Life’s but a walking shadow…” monologue.
Their performance is interrupted by two visitors who promptly draw their weapons as Crane implores them, “If I could request that you refrain from killing each other.” Although police helicopters would soon arrive and Oosterveen would be shot and killed, he and Crane agree to the bonkers idea of holding auditions and rehearsals and then performing the entire play within the game’s virtual world.
Grand Theft Hamlet’s Open World Means Anything Can Happen
By virtue of being able to travel to any location within the game’s open world, the filmmakers generate a near-inexhaustible amount of ticklishly fun visual interest during the play’s production process.And it never gets old watching actors rehearse a scene and then get punched, shot, or fall off a helipad.But during the audition process, Oosterveen and Crane, self-described “white, 40-something blokes,” also expose themselves to people of all colors and persuasions whose avatars keep any preconceived notions or prejudices at bay. One prospective cast member is trans and can relate to Hamlet, a character who is “finding his own truth.” Another, whose avatar is a shirtless, behatted man, is actually a female literary agent andHamletfan playing on her nephew’s gaming system.
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Some of these deeper thoughts, especially the ones that remind us of the power of art as a curative, add a lovely dimension.Other times, there’s a sense of overreach, as when Crane reflects on the meaning of Hamlet’s iconic “To be, or not to be” soliloquy and later recites dialogue over shots of the lonely, poor, and dispossessed. None of it bogs down the film, which naturally culminates in a one-time-only performance that takes place on June 28, 2025, and unfolds on a boat, a blimp, a casino, a Playboy mansion-style grotto, and atop an abandoned limousine, where the Ghost of Hamlet’s father is played by a guy who arrivesin a flying DeLorean.
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Sharing headspace with our genuine enjoyment ofGrand Theft Hamletare questions about how much of the final product happened as dramatized, even if what’s offered is such surreal fun that one is compelled to let it go. At one point, Grylls argues that Crane is so obsessed with the production that he missed her birthday and that the only way to see him is inside GTA. If this intimate family argument really happened in-game — and the film does not convince us it did — they should have sought therapy immediately.
While Grylls does an admirable job crafting a clean narrative from so many hours of bad audio and unwieldy digital happenings, issues like seeing two characters move their mouths while only one speaks can be off-putting. Also not helping is Jamie Perera’s score, which too insistently underlines many of the emotional beats.
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Grand Theft Hamletis one of the more humorous and slightly heartbreaking documentaries about our emotional processing of the pandemic.It is not a tale told by idiots, but rather a group of lonely, struggling, and talented artists who use one of the only artistic outlets available to them to survive during a very fraught time. It is also one of the most unique Hamlet productions ever mounted and the only one with the immortal stage direction, “and then we’ll jump onto the blimp.”
Grand Theft Hamlet, produced by Grasp The Nettle Films, and Project 1961 and distributed by MUBI, will be released in wider theaters on January 17. You can find more information (along with UK screenings and Q&A dates with the filmmakers)here.
