{"id":135160,"date":"2026-02-16T15:12:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/135160\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T15:12:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:12:21","slug":"oromeo-review-bollywood-shakespeare-takes-dive-into-grisly-mafia-queens-territory-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/135160\/","title":{"rendered":"O\u2019Romeo review \u2013 Bollywood Shakespeare takes dive into grisly mafia queens territory | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

It must be Misbegotten Adaptations week<\/a>. This Hindi gangland epic\u2019s credentials are impeccable: director Vishal Bhardwaj previously wowed with textured, inventive variations on Macbeth (Maqbool, 2003), Othello (Omkara, 2006) and Hamlet (Haider, 2014). But rather than a straightforward modernisation of Romeo and Juliet, this latest revisits a grisly true-crime story ripped from Hussain Zaidi\u2019s Mafia Queens of Mumbai, the book that previously inspired Sanjay Leela Bhansali\u2019s 2022 hit, Gangubai Kathiawadi<\/a>. The results align Bhardwaj with the newly lurid turn mainstream Bollywood has taken with recent smashes Animal and Dhurandhar, but it\u2019s jarring to witness, as if Kenneth Branagh had followed his turn-of-the-90s Shakespeare successes by trying for Natural Born Killers.<\/p>\n

For Venice (or Baz Luhrmann\u2019s Venice Beach), Bhardwaj swaps the Mumbai underworld of the 1990s, ushering in the movies\u2019 first morally degenerate Romeo. Shahid Kapoor\u2019s Hussein Ustara \u2013 nicknamed Romeo \u2013 is a heavily tattooed bellower employed as a hitman for a local godfather; his Juliet (Animal\u2019s Triptii Dimri) an aggrieved widow clutching a sizeable hitlist. These two are star-crossed: he rescues her amid a bungled assassination attempt on the lawyer smearing her late husband, earning them both powerful foes. The fish tank through which Leo glimpsed Claire Danes here abuts the bed to which this Romeo takes two escorts while his Juliet listens in. Happy Valentine\u2019s Day, everybody.<\/p>\n

Bold image-making and considered design are visible through the murk, and the performances are strong. Kapoor and Dimri commit to this plot\u2019s peculiar demands, while Nana Patekar is appreciably sly as our antihero\u2019s wearied handler. Yet where Gangubai showcased Bhansali\u2019s heightened tonal sensitivity, the gruelling three hours here veer between crude and emotionally inert: a tale of obsession and abjection, with its dead-eyed lovers dragging one another towards the gutter and the grave. It\u2019s the kind of distinctive misfire that could only be made by someone who is so hung up on a story they swallow its poisons whole. Still, it\u2019s mildly heartbreaking to see such a thoughtful cineaste tossing his library card for the leering tough guy.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Romeo is in cinemas now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It must be Misbegotten Adaptations week. This Hindi gangland epic\u2019s credentials are impeccable: director Vishal Bhardwaj previously wowed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-135160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}