奥菲莉娅（黛茜·雷德利DaisyRidley饰）从小就生得一副男孩样，个性大大咧咧爱跑爱跳的她也常常被人误认为是男孩。一次偶然中，奥菲莉娅遇见了格特鲁德王后（娜奥米·沃茨NaomiWatts饰），王后非常喜欢奥菲莉娅的个性，于是将她带回了宫中栽培，没过多久，聪慧过人的奥菲莉娅就成为了她身边最值得信赖的女官。哈姆雷特王子（乔治·麦凯GeorgeMacKay饰）是格特鲁德王后的儿子，他和奥菲莉娅在朝夕相处之下最终坠入了爱河之中。哪知道，平日里最疼爱奥菲莉娅的格特鲁德王后竟然强烈的反对这段恋情，与此同时，哈姆雷特发现，原来杀死自己父亲的凶手正是迎娶了格特鲁德王后的，自己的叔叔克劳迪斯（克里夫·欧文CliveOwen饰）。

This film is a reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s classic Hamlet from a feminist perspective.The writers modified the story and reshaped the fate and image of Ophelia.Notably,women take a more prominent part in the movie.I mean emphasizing the role women played in the history is great.But somehow the director overemphasized it and made the story very unnatural.For example, the director replaced the scene of the conversation between Hamlet and his father’s ghost with the conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia to let Hamlet know the truth. This kind of setting is not that convincing. Besides, in the end, strangely Ophelia seemed to know that Hamlet would die in the fight with Leoties and without further persuasion she just went on her journey to the nunnery. And another point is that she can dress like a boy to disguise herself and sneak to Hamlet persuading him. Why can’t she persuade her brother? Isn’t it more effective? The heroine is stressing the importance of forgiving rather than vengeance all through the story. However, she is the only one who really forgive and the brightest spot of this film is the vengeance of the queen and the witch. In this aspect, the main point writers wanted to convey unfortunately contradicts with the attractive climax of the film.

In a word, this movie is a nice try to modify classics into today’s world view. But the modification is too hard and too pointed to one side that it lost the flavour of the original and make the new story creepy.