Oromeo Review – Bollywood Shakespeare dives into the horrific territory of mafia queens | film

IIt must be a week of false adaptations. The credentials of this Hindi gangster epic are impeccable: director Vishal Bhardwaj has previously impressed with inventive and ornate variations on Macbeth (Maqbool, 2003), Othello (Omkara, 2006), and Hamlet (Haider, 2014). But instead of a straightforward update of Romeo and Juliet, the latter revisits a harrowing true crime story taken from Hussain Zaidi’s book The Mafia Queens of Mumbai, the book that had previously inspired Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2022 hit book, Gangubai Kathiawadi. The results for Bhardwaj are in keeping with the new turn mainstream Bollywood has taken with its recent hits Animal and Dhurandhar, but it’s a bit of a surprise to behold, as if Kenneth Branagh had followed up his early 1990s Shakespearean hits with an attempt at Natural Born Killers.

For Baz Luhrmann’s Venice (or Venice Beach), Bhardwaj trades in the Mumbai underworld of the 1990s, marking the film’s first morally decadent Romeo. Shahid Kapoor’s Hussein Ostara – aka Romeo – is a heavily tattooed blowjob who works as a hitman for a local godfather; Juliet (Animal’s Triptii Dimri) is a wronged widow holding a massive hit list. These two intersect: he saves her in the middle of a failed assassination attempt by the lawyer who slanders her late husband, making them powerful rivals. The fishbowl through which Leo glimpses Claire Danes here abuts the bed to which Romeo takes an escort while Juliet listens. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

The process of making bold images and thoughtful design can be seen through the fog, and the performance is strong. Kapoor and Dimri adhere to the bizarre demands of this plot, while Nana Patekar is remarkably crafty as the heroes’ weary therapist. However, while Gangubai has demonstrated Bhansali’s heightened tonal sensitivity, the three exhausting hours here oscillate between raw and emotionally inert: a tale of obsession and abjection, as the dead-eyed lovers drag each other towards the gutter and the grave. It’s the kind of characteristic flaw that can only be caused by someone so attached to a story that he swallows its poison whole. Still, it’s somewhat heartbreaking to see such a thoughtful cinematographer toss his library card to the leering tough guy.