O Romeo Movie Review: Shahid Kapoor and Triptii Dimri’s romantic-actioner falters at being both poetic and pandering
O Romeo(2 / 5)
In Haider (2014), Shahid Kapoor’s titular character, in a post-coitus conundrum, holds a gun to his head, deliberating whether he should kill his father’s killer, who is also his mother’s lover, or take the easy way out. “Should I murder or die?” he says. “To be or not to be?” It’s a line that works on many levels. It’s Haider’s moral dilemma, it's Hamlet’s existential crisis, it’s Kashmir’s loss of identity. Fast forward to 2026 and we have Shahid as Arjun Ustara, a Devdas- don, whose biggest tragedy is that he can’t take no for an answer. When his advances are rejected by Triptii Dimri’s Afshan, he tells her, “You have made a ghost of me. I don’t know if I exist or not.” It’s a watered-down metaphor. It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t sing. It’s nothing deeper than a jilted lover’s wail after a broken fantasy.
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Triptii Dimri, Avinash Tiwary, Nana Patekar, Farida Jalal, Hussain Dalal, Disha Patani, Vikrant Massey and Tamannaah Bhatia
Directed by: Vishal Bhardwaj
Written by: Vishal Bhardwaj and Rohan Narula
O Romeo might be director Vishal Bhardwaj’s most commerce-focused film yet. Like its central character, it seems like it’s throwing razorblades in all directions hoping some will hit the mark. Shahid as Ustara is a full-body tattooed cowboy cum gangster whose behaviour oscillates between Kabir Singh and Kaminey’s (2009) Charlie. He is kept on a leash by Ismail Khan (Nana Patekar), an intelligence officer who uses him as a hired gun for contract killings. Soon, Ustara is approached by Afshan, a widow whose husband Mehboob (Vikrant Massey) was murdered by underworld don Jalal (Avinash Tiwary) and she seeks revenge. Although Ustara rebuffs her initially, he eventually gives in, to both her demands and his growing feelings for her. The film’s central plotline is taken from a chapter in Hussain Zaidi’s book Mafia Queens of Mumbai which tells the story of Sapna Didi and Hussain Ustara, the duo who planned to assassinate Dawood Ibrahim. But O Romeo isn’t a gritty mafia story. It’s more of a gangster-fantasy where dons don’t watch cricket matches in stadiums but dress up as matadors to engage in bullfighting in Spanish arenas. The film neither commits to its Mumbai mafia background nor to the essence of the Shakespearean character it’s titled after.
O Romeo suffers from a splintered storyline which is having an existential crisis of its own. It doesn’t know whether it wants to be a mass-actioner, a doomed romance or a crime-drama. An initial action scene with Shahid’s Ustara slicing bald goons in a single-screen theatre with Madhuri Dixit’s ‘Dhak dhak karne laga’ playing on the big screen sets the stage for a tongue-in-cheek (or blade in cheek?) approach to a massy entertainer. But then the film itself becomes the irony. Bhardwaj is known for dexterously threading in poetic love in a crime film but this time only Gulzar’s lyrics in ‘Ishq Ka Fever’ come to his aid since Shahid and Triptii’s chemistry seems like it is being orchestrated in a lab. With a runtime close to 3 hours, Ustara and Afshan’s love story doesn’t get enough time to grow organically.
The film has enough Vishal-isms: a classical-music obsessed cop, a C-word spewing granny (played by fairy godmother Farida Jalal) and a gangster who takes his drink from an AK-47 shaped flask, but they all shoot blanks in a haywire script. Bhardwaj assembles an impressive ensemble. Nana Patekar is brilliant as a no-nonsense cop and Shahid commits, dominates and exhibits acting prowess in every frame but the guest appearances of Disha Patani, Vikrant Massey and Tamannaah Bhatia fail to leave a mark. Avinash Tiwary overdoes the bad guy act as Jalal although his Laila Majnu (2018) co-star Triptii gives a lingering performance.
For fans of Vishal Bhardwaj’s films, O Romeo feels like a factory-line assemble. A Faustian bargain for big-screen gains. In the director’s Maqbool (2003), the first in the Shakespeare trilogy, Irrfan Khan’s titular character, a gangster in 90s Mafia-infested Mumbai, is asked how he is handling Bollywood. “Don’t ask,” he replies, dejectedly. “Fass gayi, Raziya gundo mein (Razia is stuck with goons)."