I.ii. Enter Hamlet - Zeffirelli '90

By the time Claudius gets to Hamlet in this version, he's two scenes away from the wedding banquet. We've jumped once again in both time and space, as Hamlet's parents find him sitting in the dark. He shies from the light (which adds a physical sign of his being "too much i' the sun". This has the effect of actually prolonging Hamlet's grief, as we're ever farther from his father's death. The movie retains his two puns, which are here said directly at Claudius. The King is confused by the first (or he at least play-acts confusion) and Gertrude laughs at the second. We don't know Hamlet before his father's death, but we can at least imagine his great wit. With Claudius' sympathetic portrayal early in the story, it is believable that the Queen would these words as more of the same and not see what hides behind them.
Claudius' speech is cut to pieces, so he doesn't hammer home his points as harshly, and he does not chide with his tone. The mood is kept more jovial by moving the "T'is not alone my inky cloak" speech to later. Zeffirelli has orchestrated things so that Claudius remains sympathetic as long as possible. Once his shortened speech is done and he's invited to Hamlet to stay in Elsinore, Gertrude motions him to leave by giving him looks so that she can have a private chat with her son. Glenn Close is rather impish here and throughout the early part of the play - giddy and girlish - which isn't a bad choice considering that she's a thing to be manipulated by men, not an independent woman, as happy with one King as with another.
In this private chat, Hamlet delivers his inky cloak speech. As with Branagh, he make "'tis common" sound like an accusation, but Mel Gibson's Hamlet is otherwise different. Here is a Hamlet who keeps his emotions just under the surface, visceral and in the moment. When Gertrude says "Why does it seem so particular with thee", he is visibly hurt by the word "seems", inspiring that first speech. At the end of it, he turns away almost ashamed of having let this torrent out. He's easily overwhelmed, both by grief and by whatever the present emotional context is.

In this exchange, Zeffirelli also introduces a Freudian Oedipal element, something I truly dislike about some stagings of Hamlet. I agree that there is something Oedipal about the play - Hamlet is jealous of a father figure and winds up killing him - but I don't think the text actually supports an incestual urge (nor is Claudius is real father).
We can agree that kisses on the mouth are not necessarily incestuous in Hamlet's historical context, but we'll see much later how a scene between mother and son turns into a sex scene. Zeffirelli is off-piste there. Gertrude's childish nature brings her closer to her son in age (through attitude), another trick he uses to make the incest work, but again, it isn't supported by the text, and in fact would seem to be contradicted by Hamlet seeing his mother as a sexless being and by his morally judgmental Wittenberg education.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Interesting staging with Hamlet looking out his window at the "unweeded garden" (ironically, barren stonework). It ends abruptly at "Frailty, thy name is woman!" as he slams the window, once again overcome by emotion. His repulsion is too strong for him to continue speaking. This is a Hamlet who cuts himself short because of his outrage. If lines are to be cut, I'd rather it's done to make a point, like it was here.

It would be easy to dismiss movie/action star Mel Gibson, but I really do think he's got the chops to play this Hamlet. It fits him and was the first inkling of what would become possible in Braveheart and beyond. If this version is to be dismissed by connoisseurs and scholars, it should be because of Zeffirelli's attempts to dumb the play down in order to make it more commercial.