Leeds International Film Festival 2024 – Grand Theft Hamlet ★★★★★

Released: 6 December 2024

Director: Sam Crane/Pinny Grylls

Long gone are the times when video games could be denigrated as a lesser art form. Recognised today as some of the most fertile avenues for creativity and storytelling. At the vanguard of this is undoubtedly Rockstar Games, the creator of insanely successful mega franchises, including Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. GTA V has now generated $8.5 billion in sales, possibly making it the world’s most commercially successful piece of art. Most films or shows can only dream of its continued relevance as players return again and again to breathe in its world and satisfy their creativity. One such act of creativity provides the basis of Grand Theft Hamlet, the brilliant and genre-bending new documentary from directors Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls.

It begins with Sam and his friend Mark Oosterven, both actors who are unable to work due to the UK’s third Covid lockdown in January 2021. Trapped inside, they connect via GTA Online, where we are introduced to them via their characters. We watch as they ramble aimlessly around Los Santos, a satirised replica of Los Angeles, trying to avoid anything that “feels too much like f****ing life”. Eventually, they stumble across the Vinewood Bowl theatre, a replica of the Hollywood Bowl, where a mad idea forms. Sam and Mark decide to stage a production of Hamlet within the game, complete with a casting call, auditions, location scouting, rehearsals, and even an afterparty. Sam’s partner Pinny, a documentary filmmaker, decides to record their endeavour using the games in world camera tools. The result? A documentary which captures an act of pure imagination and marks a bold new frontier for filmmaking.

Grand Theft Hamlet is remarkably cinematic, immersing the audience within GTA’s sunset vistas, crisp ocean waters, and vast yet detailed urban sprawl. So is the production of Hamlet itself, which is staged against mountains, deserts, luxury yachts and even a blimp soaring over Los Santos. The play feels, as Sam and Mark claim, “like Shakespeare with a billion-dollar budget”. Everything sits so comfortably projected on the big screen and marks a testament to the talents of Sam, Mark, Pinny and, of course, the game’s original creators.

It is also really fun, as it revels in Grand Theft Auto’s irreverent chaos. While rehearsing, our thespians get caught up in gang warfare, descended on by swat teams, and are forced to defend themselves from lone agents of chaos. This results in Shakespeare’s words being recited amongst a cacophony of sirens and explosions, as well as interspersed by the return of incoming fire and calls of “You can’t stop art mother****ers!’. These moments make for hilarious viewing and capture the bombastic, cartoonish essence of what makes GTA so appealing. For all its vilification from so-called moralists, the game has always been about over-the-top violence rather than providing any genuinely sadistic release.

The actors Sam and Mark cast also eschew the lone gamer stereotype, as they represent the diversity and richness of GTA’s players. Their in-game characters include Dipo, DJ Phil, and a mute alien bystander named ParTeb, and their real-world counterparts are equally varied. They consist of trained and amateur actors and even a literary agent who borrows her nephew’s account to audition. The community they forge is heartwarming, especially given the social disconnect of the pandemic which surrounds them, whilst highlighting the possibility of organic human connection no matter the setting.

The combination of GTA and Hamlet also works as much more than a gimmick, as Sam and Mark highlight how both encapsulate human nature in all its “stunning beauty and grotesque horrifying violence”. They remind us that “Shakespeare is f***ing violence” and meld his exploration of humanity in its extremes onto the heightened, ultra-capitalist world that GTA depicts. They also bring great poignancy to the famed ‘To Be or Not to Be’ soliloquy as Mark connects it to his own depressive thoughts. It is a deeply intimate moment where he doubts the play and his ability to go in the face of Covid, and it deftly captures the desolation the pandemic wrought on so many of us.

Indeed, Grand Theft Hamlet offers one of the most compelling insights into the daily emotional impact of COVID-19 that any media has achieved thus far. It captures how individuals were left at a loss, with nowhere else to go other than into their pastimes, as entire industries, livelihoods, and ways of life were decimated. By filtering everything through its colourful, off-kilter video game footage, the film remains eminently watchable, even at its most sombre moments, allowing its audience to digest the emotional strain depicted. 

However, Grand Theft Hamlet is chiefly a celebration of an audacious artistic achievement and the perseverance it involved. It is also a celebration of art in all its forms, which can provide an avenue for catharsis and communication to help with painful times. In this case, during a time so painfully memorable to us all.