Romeo Is Bleeding

which strictly speaking should not be stealable in the first place. I mean, on the surface this is one of those oddball in-color "film noire" gangstery films which Hollywood has become so fond of recently. It has an especially clever script and reminds me in subtle ways of the many cross-arcs in Lucky Number Slevin. The two stars Gary Oldman and Lena Olin both do not usually get the chance to do a star turn, they are both very under-used as primary characters, and that should be the end of the review. But it is not. Olin gives an extraordinary performance, part sensuality, part evil genius, part crazy. By the end of the film she makes Kevin Spacey look like a chartered accountant. Also a nice cautionary tale on letting your reach exceed your grasp. Extraordinary. Highly recommended.

There are very few pictures I would give a 1 to. But this movie really had me thinking pretty quickly:is it over yet? That's pretty much all I could think when I watched this. I actually almost fell asleep watching this. To this day, I don't remember the specifics about the plot but I do not think I knew even while the movie was on because it's almost impossible to understand. I guess there is a story in there somewhere but it's kind of lost in a haze of shady goings on and as the movie went on it became more and more difficult to watch. I remember thinking, when watching this, that it seemed muddled and murky. There was a lot of violence, crime, sex etc thrown in but it seemed impossible to understand what was going on at any given time. Where is the plot? This movie sounded sounded interesting before I watched it. And I'll watch almost anything that has Gary Oldman in it. But I wish there had been more of an emphasis on plot and character development. I understand this move will appeal to some people but it just didn't click with me. One interesting thing worth noting is that this is almost the opposite of a "chick flick". It seems to appeal more to the men I know then the women. I saw this with a group of people. Of the people I watched this with, the females Hated it and the males absolutely loved it. All That being said, Gary oldman is a great actor(loved him in Sid and Nancy), Though I dislike this movie, I know there are some major fans out there. Maybe I'll give it another try, but there aren't to many movies I was as bored by as this one.

Romeo Is Bleeding is directed by Peter Medak and written by Hilary Henkin. It stars Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, Annabella Sciorra, Juliette Lewis and Roy Scheider. Music is by Mark Isham and Gary Alper and cinematography by Dariusz Wolski. Oldman plays corrupt cop Jack Grimaldi who does favours for The Mob in exchange for considerable payments. He has a loving wife and a mistress, but even that can't satiate his lust leanings. So when he is assigned to babysit Russian hit-woman Mona Demarkov (Olin), he is soon up to his neck in sexual yearnings. Something which spells trouble for everyone... A box office flop and savaged by some pro critics, Romeo Is Bleeding is clearly not a film for everyone! Yet for those who like their neo-noir sprinkled with satire and Grindhouse flavours, it's definitely the film for you. It's possible that some folk just didn't get it, that it has its tongue firmly in its bloody cheek? While some of the charges of misogyny and it being a macho fantasy are kind of moot given it's written by a woman! Undeniably it is guilty of going too far over the top, where as it cheekily laughs at itself it forgets to rein itself in, a problem since the finale is surprisingly touching but difficult to accept given the carnage previously. The trajectory of story is classic noir. Hapless corrupt copper Jack Grimaldi loves his wife but finds it easy to cheat with other women. Once the incredibly sexy Mona Demarkov slinks into his view, he's in big trouble. Add in The Mob after him due to not carrying out a "hit" and you get a noir protagonist spinning towards misery. Grimaldi narrates in snatches to keep the mood simmering on desperation, while visual smarts like a triplicate mirror image - or a scene at a amusement park - further enhance the noir atmosphere. While Olin's Demarko has to rank as one of the most potent femme fatales to steam up the screen. Superbly performed by the principal actors and backed up with solid support, film doesn't lack for quality in that department. And with Wolski's photography and Isham's music also leaving indelible marks on the sleaze and greed mood, tech credits are impressive. If only Medak had not tried to take too bigger a slice of cake then this would be talked about as a neo-noir classic. As it is, as appendages are lost and the pulses raised, this still plays out as a disgustingly sexy, weirdly off-kilter and bloody fun piece of film. 7.5/10

Gary Oldman is a bad cop who doesn't know when to quit. His luck finally runs out when he runs into the best female movie villain ever! (If you've seen The Usual Suspects, think of her as Mrs. Kobayashi.) I won't say anything more, since knowing anything about this movie before seeing it will spoil it.

I can't say that "Romeo Is Bleeding" is the worse movie I've ever seen but it ranks up there as a memorable stinker. The over-acting was horrible. I thought I was in a ham factory. Gary Oldman, who is a talented actor, is prone to over emote and in this movie no one tried to rein in the ego and self importance. He was ridiculous. The story was ridiculous. Lena Olin was ridiculous. Annabella Sciorra was depressing. The other characters in the movie were a cross section of Hollywood stereotypes. There wasn't an original idea in this mess. The pacing was abysmally slow and that was interrupted by cartoonish violence often in slow motion. The narration was laughable and only showed how poor the screenplay was. If you have to be told what the story is then the movie is not doing its job. It was a bad, bad movie. Please miss it.

I had to comment because I simply can not believe all of the lower rating numbers this film has received; it's one of my very favorite films of the 1990s. This film is not perfect, as stated by other people, Roy Schieder is terribly miscast (although I was more distracted by his obvious face-lift). Otherwise, this film rocks. The rest of the cast is simply superb and I don't know how in the world Gary Oldman, Juliette Lewis, Annabella Sciorra and Lena Olin were not nominated for the Academy Award in their respective categories. Hilary Henkin has written a tight and compelling script and it's directed with sheer brilliance. Gary Oldmaan is one of the best actors of his generation and nowhere is that comment more obvious than in his performance in this film. As Jack Grimaldi, his New York accent is spot-on. He creates a character which most people will recognize somewhere in his/her life and delivers it with such ease that you live Jack's life through this outstanding actor's performance. Juliette Lewis has never been better. Her performance is funny, touching and ultimately tragic. Annabella Sciorra is glorious as Jack's earth-mother wife. Everything about her performance rings true. But, it's impossible to even find words to describe Lena Olin's Mona Demarkoff. Wow! Beautiful, sexy, tough, cold-hearted, vicious and unrelenting. I'm impossible to ever forget her performance once you've seen it. I haven't seen this film in years, and I'm still upset that she didn't win the Academy Award and wasn't even nominated! When this film failed to get any nominations at all was the time I stopped watching the Oscars. Rent it. You'll never forget it.

Revisiting Romeo is Bleeding after a number of years, I was struck by what still works, what doesn't, and how wonderful endings allow us to overlook any number of faults that lead up to them. Gary Oldman is Jack, a corrupt DS well-loved by his men looking to build an ill-gotten nest egg towards early retirement. And on one level it is all going so well, except enough is never enough, and he just can't leave the ladies alone. Enter Mona (Lena Olin), a femme fatale who manages to inhabit both the femme and the fatale completely. The cop in Jack knows to cuff her, lock her up, and throw away the key, but the Jack in Jack has another agenda. Romeo is Bleeding is every frame a modern noir thriller, made great by Hilary Henkin's script exhibiting detailed reverence for the genre, and some unparalleled performances by the actors. Oldman is breath-taking, cynical and world-weary delivering his Marlowe-style quips, raw and vulnerable reaching crescendo when he puts a gun barrel in his mouth. It would be too much to ask his co-stars to outshine him, but they certainly keep up. Olin produces a nightmarish laugh at the most inappropriate times, and Juliette Lewis's cocktail waitress (what else?) Sheri's innocence is perfectly ignorant, far too ignorant to survive in this brutal arena. Annabella Sciorra as Natalie completes the trio of Jack's women, his not-so-unaware wife. She is not as cold-hearted towards Jack as Mona, not as infatuated as Sheri, but her flawed love contains a bit of both. She points a gun at him, and we know she knows. Sitting on the porch they have one of those oblique conversations only old married couples know, where every utterance is sub-text, and restraint and feigned ignorance are the name of the game. Jack never quite gets to grips with her, and that is to be his ultimate tragedy. There are hints of Chandler here (the letter to Jack from The Boys), and Chinatown, too, most noticeably in the bloodied, deformed demeanor of the protagonist in the final third, but Romeo is Bleeding is a stylish noir piece that acknowledges its antecedents without racking up debts. And then there is the ending, of such heartbreaking, poignant beauty, Oldman and Sciorra pitch-perfect, deftly shot and edited, a wave you ride and crash on shore with. Startling, stunning, and yet how could this tale have ended otherwise? "Sometimes, she stays a little longer. And then she's gone." Not a perfect film, but a perfect ending, and I'll take that every time.

This is by far the worst film I've seen Gary Oldman in. Sure, he is good, but the film itself stinks. There is a difference between a nicely convoluted noir plot and an illogical mess. "Romeo is Bleeding" strives for the former and ends up as the latter. Sure, it's unusual (legs around head driving scene), but scarcely is there any motivation for the characters to do what they do, and so we (or I) lose interest. It could have been so much more, given the cast and plot. As it is, it's horrid.

This movie is a complete waste of time. A bunch of us picked it up because it had a great cast and looked rather interesting. Well, bleh! It was boring, poorly acted and way over done. The score is overpowering, distracting the viewer from the movie, although, that is probably because the script is so bad, they wanted any reason for the viewer not to notice. And it was dark! I mean physically dark where you can't really see what's going on (again, I suspect that's a distraction technique!) About half way through, we turned the movie off and started a different one...we just didn't care how things turned out! Avoid!!!!

Romeo Is Bleeding is an excellent film. It is Number 2 on my all time favourite list. Number 1 is "Midnight Run". Why doI like it? It has a great performance by Gary Oldman, (from Sid and Nancy and Track 29). I became a big fan of Oldman and watched everything I could get my hands on by this guy! The direction is first rate by British master Peter Medak (Let Him Have It and Ponatiac Moon) and a very moody jazz score by the talented Mark Isham! I also own the soundtrack. Dariusz Wolski did amazing cinematography on this one. He would later go on to do Dark City and The Mexican. So yeah, a good crew and a great cast, what can I say? Other kudos must go out to the beautiful women in this, Lena Olen and Juliette Lewis are breathtaking in this. And the sex scenes are pretty steamy.....for me anyway. Some light B&D in this. Scrited by Hillary Henken (Roadhouse and Wag the Dog) and a nice character by Michael Wincott.....he says "HEY YOU GOTTA GIVE ME SOMETHING,....(to a stranger) WHAT THE @&^#! ARE YOU LOOKIN' AT?!" Best line hands down: Do you know what is so scary about love? It's that you don't own it. IT OWNS YOU!! That line has a lot of truth, for me. So rent it if you wanna see something dark, edgy, and independent! Thank ya!