Towards the end of the movie O’Romeo, the heroine asks the hero, how can someone love someone like this, appreciating what he has done for her. While the signature unorthodox style of Vishal Bhardwaj in presenting badass characters is making us feel that the movie is going to be something special, the way it drifts away from establishing a solid romantic equation between the lead pair is costing the movie heavily. Thus, when that climax showdown occurs, it feels like an exhausting cliche, and the dialogue I mentioned at the beginning generates zero impact. Vishal Bhardwaj teases you with the possibility of delivering something that will linger inside you, but delivers a collage of stretched action blocks.
The story is set in 1995, and our hero, Ustara, is a goon who secretly works for the police. This guy, who badly wants to leave India with his close aide for a chilled out life, one day meets this girl named Afsha Qureshi, who approaches him with a demand to contract kill 4 powerful people, out of which one was Jalal, the most dreaded don of those times. Even though he rejects her demands, her persistence and some unplanned events make him help her when he realizes what happened to her. What we see here is the evolution of this relationship.
It is rumoured that Sapna Didi was a movie Vishal Bhardwaj wanted to make with Deepika Padukone, based on the chapter about that individual in Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens of Mumbai. It is the same book that inspired Sanjay Leela Bhansali to make Gangubai. Sapna Didi was a real person who wanted to and made plans to kill Dawood Ibrahim. However, that movie eventually got shelved, and O’Romeo is somewhat a reimagination of the same story in a totally different setting. The shift in perspective of this story transforms it into a violent action movie, and with constant references to music of that era playing in the background, Vishal Bhardwaj almost makes the movie look like a violent version of Devdas. What makes even the most straightforward revenge movies impactful is the drama that unfolds in the story. O’Romeo fails to establish the moment when the switch happened in Ustara’s life.
Vishal Bhardwaj is someone who refreshingly stages scenes, even though we are now familiar with his style. The blend of sloppy English, cuss words, the lighter tone given to grey characters, and peculiar character quirks is all making each scene in this movie a promise. The introduction scene of Tripti Dimri has her character giving a contract killer the routine of the man she wants to kill. I mean, the unhinged approach of that character would even shock us, much like the hero and his gang. Most of the scripts by Vishal Bhardwaj have this snowballing effect, where everything leads to a massive showdown. Here, you could clearly see the movie indulging in the sexiness of each scene and just going on and on. The introduction scene of Ustara that showcases how much of an animal he is and his signature style of violence is happening in a never-ending fashion. After that, you have this item number featuring Disha Patani, and it felt like such gallery-pleasing compromises made O’Romeo a disappointment for all categories of audience.
The movie falters significantly in the second half, where the hero is in a different mindset altogether. The story wants Ustara to be this badly hurt Romeo who can’t be contained by anyone, and as I said in the beginning, there wasn’t enough material in the story that would make the audience realize why she was so precious to him. I am talking about the lack of romantic moments in a three-hour-long film that’s titled O’Romeo and released on a Valentine’s Day weekend. As the story progressed, the drama became less exciting, and it felt like, after investing too much time in showing the violent, playboy life of the hero, the movie was skimming through the significant chapters. The agile frames are helping the action to look brutal on screen. I loved how the precision in the cuts and the sound design made the movie less gory and yet extremely violent. The music by Vishal Bhardwaj has that typical slow-burn texture, and it stays with you because of the way the film uses it in snippets through various versions.
Shahid Kapoor flows very fluently as a gangster. In his past films, especially in movies like Kamineyy and the recent Deva, he has shown that he can pull off the rugged swagger easily. Here, the characterization is such that even his physical movements need the same agility, and I loved the scene where he mocked his fellow men for playing cricket. Tripti Dimri plays the damsel in distress, but with a clear plan. There are these Shakespearean dramatic moments in the love story of the lead pair, and Tripti was able to perform the cluelessness of Afsha neatly on screen. Avinash Tiwary, as the main antagonist, gets to flex a different set of his acting muscles in this wildly reimagined version of Dawood Ibrahim. Nana Patekar as Khan works really well for the movie, as the give and take between him and Shahid was offering some fun to the audience. Singer Rahul Deshpande’s casting as Inspector Pathare was a smart one. Tamannah Bhatia gets to do one more cameo-like role along with names like Vikrant Massey and Disha Patani.
There are some movies that disappoint you because at every juncture in that movie, you could see the possibility for it to be something much better and cinematically moving. However, the shift in creative priorities just makes those movies the most basic version of what they could have achieved. Vishal Bhardwaj’s movie definitely has a handful of takeaways, but for a three-hour-long slog, that’s not enough.
