'Grand Theft Hamlet' Is Heartfelt, Charming, and Like Nothing You've Ever Seen

By Dustin Rowles | Film | March 13, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | March 13, 2024 |

I had no idea what to expect when I walked into a screening of Grand Theft Auto at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival, and that is part of the film festival experience. You never know what you’re going to get — unexpected gem, clunker, or something in between. The first thing we learn about Grand Theft Hamlet, meanwhile, is that the movie takes places entirely within the Grand Theft Auto video game, which was enough for me to say to myself, “I’ll give it ten minutes, and if it hasn’t captured my attention, I’m out.”

It took maybe two minutes to win me over, and it’s not because of the world of Grand Theft Auto but because of the out-of-work actors — Sam Crane and Mark Oversteen — playing the game. It’s not just a movie set within Grand Theft Auto; it’s a documentary. It’s the tail end of the pandemic, and Mark and Sam — along with Sam’s partner, documentary filmmaker Pinny Grylls — are bored. The months and months of unemployment (they are primarily theater actors) have taken a toll on them.

And so when Mark and Sam stumble upon an outdoor amphitheater within the game, an idea is born. It begins as something of a joke, but their attempt to stage a production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet within the video game gains a life of its own. This is not a lengthy production of Hamlet set in GTA, however. It’s about how they managed to audition actors within a video game, stage the production in a world that is hostile to players, rehearse for many, many hours within that world, and finally, combine all of those elements to put on a play in front of a live GTA audience.

It’s a remarkable feat, and much of the fun is in watching them approach other strangers within the game and try to convince them to act in their production without getting shot by people predisposed to shooting them. It is obviously a violent game. And even once they find people willing to participate, they have to compel them to return time and again to rehearse instead of doing what GTA is designed for: Killing people.

What I didn’t expect is how invested Sam and Mark are about putting on this play, and how invested I became in seeing them put it on. Mark, in particular, is lonely — he has no wife or kids — and this production is the only real thing he has going on in his life during the lockdown. He clings to it while Sam increasingly uses the video-game production as an escape from his family. But it’s also the tail end of lockdown, so they have to deal with actor/players who return to their jobs in the real world and have to drop out of the play.

Mostly, however, they have to deal with in-game elements like the police chasing them down or characters falling off a blimp. It’s the only production of Hamlet that ever included this instruction: “You can’t stop a production just because someone dies.”

It’s an often funny but mostly heartfelt film about an unlikely group of people who both love Grand Theft Auto and Shakespeare — a Venn Diagram with concentric circles that practically repel each other like magnets — and who bond in a virtual space designed to do the opposite.

‘Grand Theft Hamlet’ premiered at the SXSW Film and TV Festival. It does not yet have a premiere date, although indie studio Altitude secured worldwide rights after its festival screening.