Tom Stoppard's modern stage classic finds a pair of film actors worthy of its verbal japery and existential bewilderment: Gary Oldman and Tim Roth are deliciously locked in as the title characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. And yet it remains difficult to tell which one is Rosencrantz and which Guildenstern--even they seem unsure--a clever part of Stoppard's ingenious design. Focusing on a pair of unremarkable characters from Hamlet, Stoppard sees the great play from their confused perspective. Now and again the action of Hamlet sweeps them up, but... most of the time R&G are left wondering where they are, what they have been sent for, and why they can't remember anything that happened before the beginning of the play. Richard Dreyfuss (fittingly grandiloquent) is the Player King, who seems to know more about the ominous workings of fiction and tragedy than the heroes do. Stoppard's first outing as a film director is handsomely shot but uncertainly paced--although any time Oldman and Roth go into one of their tennis-match debates on probability, identity, or death, the movie crackles. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern may be the "indifferent children of the earth," but for this brief moment they deserve center stage. --Robert Horton [show more]
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Tom Stoppard directs this feature adaptation of his own play in which two minor characters from 'Hamlet' amble unknowingly toward their inevitable demise. Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) arrive in Elsinore, summoned by King Claudius (Donald Sumpter) to discover the source of Prince Hamlet (Iain Glen)'s melancholy. Trapped on the fringes of the plot, the inept duo struggle to make sense of their roles and motivation.
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