William Shakespeare's plays have been adapted in so many ways on stage and screen that Tim Blake Nelson's O, which finds Othello reimagined in the world of an exclusive Southern prep school, doesn't seem particularly radical or imaginative. It is a good fit though, as Othello's themes of jealousy, betrayal, and deception are particularly applicable to the realm of pampered American adolescence. In that way, it is similar to Cruel Intentions, the 1999 teenage updating of Dangerous Liaisons, because the Machiavellian plot mechanics demand that the teen characters act in ways in which no real teens ever act. The big difference, however, is that O is lacking Cruel Intentions' deliberately trashy tone; rather, it is a deadly serious exploration of adolescent intrigue, which is both a value and flaw.

Of course, at this point, everyone knows O as the movie that was shelved for two years because its initial release was postponed due to the Columbine massacre in the spring of 1999. Studio executives thought it prudent not to release a movie about teenage betrayal that leads to murder and suicide in the wake of that tragedy, and it has spent the last two years bouncing around studios as the hot potato no one wants to touch (kudos to Lions Gates for having the gumption to finally get it into theaters).

The violence at the end of the film is disturbing (as it should be), and not just because it is teenage characters brutally killing each other, thus bringing to mind Columbine and the whole reason this film sat on a shelf for so long. Rather, it is disturbing because director Tim Blake Nelson gives it such a tone of desperation and sheer ugliness; set into motion by a malicious, calculating plot, you can't help but feel that the characters are trapped in a clockwork mechanism from which they cannot escape, and the violence thus becomes gut-wrenching because of its sheer inevitability. Visually, there is a palpable uneasiness about the eerily prophetic framing of the final scenes, with their rows of flashing police cars behind stony-faced reporters intoning silently about teenagers killing each other and a group of blond girls crying and holding each other. It could have come right off the evening news and is, unfortunately, the most realistic aspect of the whole movie.

The story takes place at an exclusive South Carolina private school with a nationally ranked basketball team. Othello becomes Odin James (Mekhi Phifer), the only African-American student at the school and the team's most valuable player. The deceitful Iago is recast as Hugo (Josh Hartnett), one of Odin's teammates whose father (Martin Sheen), the team's coach, pays more attention to Odin than he does to Hugo. This establishes what Shakespeare kept as a mystery: Iago/Hugo's motivation for doing what he does. The movie supplies a Freudian psychological drama that explains Hugo's willfully malicious actions--Daddy didn't love him. Desdemona becomes Desi (Julia Stiles), the dean's daughter who is dating Odin secretly, although their relationship is intense enough that they "pretend" marriage and she gives up her virginity to him.

As in Shakespeare's play, O is about how Hugo destroys the relationship between Odin and Desi by playing characters against each other through the spreading of lies and appealing to their weaknesses. Thus, he has complete control over Roger (Elden Henson), the chubby son of the school president whom no one likes, because he plays on Roger's desires to be accepted and his secret crush on Desi. Hugo also knows just which of Odin's buttons to push, manipulating his insecurities about being the only black student at the school and turning Desi into something she is not in Odin's mind.

First-time screenwriter Brad Kaaya does a nice job of adapting Shakespeare's play to the world of upper class prep-school students and high-pressure basketball, but once Shakespeare's language has been stripped away and replaced with a modern vernacular, it becomes that much more obvious how intensely labored and overdetermined the plot of Othello really is. Especially because it is teenagers who are now manipulating the action, O suffers because it is simply not believable. Too much of the action hinges on characters seeing certain things, being in just the right place at just the right time, and overhearing just the right words to give the false impressions that lead to ruptures in their relationships.

For example, in one scene, Hugo has Odin hide on a porch outside his dorm room while he talks to one of their teammates, Michael (Andrew Keegan). Hugo has been trying to convince Odin that Michael is seeing Desi behind his back, thus he gears their conversation to give the appearance that Michael is bragging about his sexual exploits with Desi when he is really talking about another girl. Yet, we realize that this works only because Michael speaks exclusively with the pronoun "she," rather than ever saying the name of the girl about whom he's speaking. Maybe this would happen, but it's just too convenient the way it works out.

Overall, O is a deadly serious movie, although it has a few cheeky, self-reflexive moments, such as the scene in which a teacher asks Hugo to name one of Shakespeare's sonnets, and he mumbles the reply, "I thought he wrote movies." Director Tim Blake Nelson, whose directorial debut Eyes of God was critically acclaimed and little seen (he is best known for playing the comical Delmar in the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou?), has a good visual sense and a steady pace. The basketball game sequences have a rousing rhythm and tempo, and he uses some interesting camera angles and movements to suggest an unsettled tone throughout the film (although his forced symbolism involving birds and the school's mascot, a hawk, is labored and unnecessary).

Nelson also gets very good performances from all the young actors. Most notably, Mekhi Phifer (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer) plays the role of Odin in a way that suggests how desperately he wants to do the right thing, but is tragically incapable of keeping his inner jealousy in check; he's too willing to listen to Hugo and too reluctant to pay attention to his own inner voice. For his part, Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor) is insidiously understated as Hugo, even though his role becomes a bit strained when the underlying Freudian psychological anguish over his father's casual rejection of him comes to the forefront. It's a logical explanation for his malevolent actions, but like much of O, it's just not quite as believable as it needs to be.

Copyright © 2001 James Kendrick