O Romeo review: A squandered opportunity!

O Romeo review: A squandered opportunity!

‘O Romeo’ - Romance and Revenge meet Rhapsody in Vishal Bharadwajs excessively self-indulgent drama that needed razor sharp focus.

O Romeo movie review

A womanizing hitman under the payroll of the police, a window seeking revenge of her husband’s brutal killing and a kingpin of a Mafia operating from Spain look exciting on paper when they become the pivotal characters of a violence-laced drama in a period setting conjured by the Quentin Tarantino of Bollywood – Vishal Bhardwaj, but doesn’t translate into one.

In ‘O Romeo’, Bhardwaj’s blue-eyed boy, Shahid Kapoor plays Ustraa , a gangster turned hitman operating under the payroll of Ismail Khan (Nana Patekar) to wipe off the nasty criminals in the thriving underworld of the 90s – the setting characterized by Nadeem Shravan’s melodious tracks and a bustling nukkad with a Chachi ki Biryani hotel –a hub for nefarious and notorious activities.

Shahid goes by the moniker Ustraa for his razor-sharp grip on the weapon to slit throats which is demonstrated exorbitantly in the film’s opening action sequence unfolding inside a theatre – where the lusty Dhak Dhak song (from Beta, 1992) played on the screen serves an analogy to Bhardwaj’s artistic violence on the ground.

Bhardwaj builds up the intrigue well with Afsha (Tripti Dimri) knocking at Ustraa’s door for a contract but doesn’t sustain it. His interpretation of romance has a poetic quality which holds its flavor like a chewing gum, and then squanders its potential to a horrid chemistry between the leads interspersed with guns and grenades.

It goes haywire post intermission with the entry of Jalal (Avinash Tiwary), who’s more interested in corrida de toros and flexing his abs than histrionics – a skill more efficiently exhibited by Vikrant Massey and Tamannah Bhatia’s squeezed-in cameos.