O'Romeo Review: Shahid Kapoor Film Is Vivid, Visceral And Visually Varied

The most striking aspect of a Vishal Bhardwaj film, even one that does not fully land, is that there is nary a dull moment in it. He does not hold back. He stays within the parameters of Mumbai's mainstream practices while seeking ways around and beyond the commercial movie template.

The writer-director does that with exceptional elan in O'Romeo. The film employs and mixes genre principles in ways that elevate even a standard vengeance saga to a level that is well above the ordinary.

An ultra-violent underworld drama, Bhardwaj's new film, which runs for three hours without ever seeming over-indulgent, tempers bursts of extreme violence with tender moments marked by striking lyricism (thanks as much to the screenplay and the dialogues as to the evocative-as-ever lyrics by Gulzar).

A vivid, visceral, and visually varied film, O'Romeo uses music as a solid narrative spine that supports the story of a bunch of flawed individuals fighting their adversaries and their own destructive instincts with inconsistent degrees of success. There is little in the film that is predictable.

The songs and the background score, both by Bhardwaj himself, are an absolute treat. The musical numbers are delivered as staged song and dance set pieces, even as they are neatly and efficaciously intertwined with the soundtrack.

The film treats love as both a driving force and a curse as the paths of two dissimilar people - a ruthless hitman dealing with conflicting emotions and the young widow of a mafia don's accountant - cross, triggering a chain of events that takes a heavy toll of human lives.

Written by Rohan Narula and Vishal Bhardwaj on the basis of a story by Hussain Zaidi (it is extracted from his book, Mafia Queens of Mumbai), O'Romeo is fast-paced, stunningly lensed, and brilliantly edited.

It glides smoothly between the mid-1990s and artfully inserted flashbacks that bring to light the motivations of the key figures who people the tale. It flits between a world inhabited by Mumbai gangsters of three decades ago and a part of Spain from where a treacherous mafia don (who has joined hands with the ISI post-Babri demolition) runs a drug empire.

O'Romeo combines the sweep of Shakespearean theatre with the tried-and-tested devices of crime movies (the nod is unambiguously to The Godfather, with both Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo being mentioned in a line of dialogue). It never, however, falls prey to facile character classifications and genre traps.

Nobody in O'Romeo is a flawless being. The anti-hero, Ustara (Shahid Kapoor) - thus named because of the finesse with which he uses a barber's blade to kill - is an unapologetic womaniser until he meets Afshan Qureshi (Tripti Dimri), a demure but determined widow out to avenge the killing of her husband (Vikrant Massey in a cameo).

Ustara, once a key member of a gang that he had to flee after murdering the leader's brother, now reports to Intelligence Bureau officer Ismail Khan (Nana Patekar). The IB operative uses the killer to eliminate men who pose a threat to the nation.

In the opening sequences, Khan orders a kill. Ustara, armed only with a razor, his weapon of choice, barges into a movie theatre where a film financier is in the midst of a trial of a new film.

As Madhuri Dixit dances to Dil Dhak Dhak Karne Laga on the screen, Ustara fights an army of bald bodyguards who arrive to save the moneybag suspected of bankrolling Jalal's operations. The manner in which the action is mounted and executed provides a foretaste of what is to come.

As the film unfolds, the violence gets more insistent and intense. It blood-letting might be stomach-churning for some, but none of the acts of violence seems to be out of place in a universe where lives matter little; only turfs and spheres of influence do.

With the initial spurts of violence out of the way, a soft-spoken Afshan reaches out to Ustara with a commission to kill four men responsible for the death of her husband.

Among her targets is a corrupt policeman, Jayant Pathare (Rahul Deshpande), who is a classical vocalist to boot. Music connects the police inspector and Afshan - the latter's father is a classical singer of the Gwalior gharana, and she herself possesses a mellifluous voice, which is the attribute that draws Ustara towards her in the first place.

One man that both Ustara and Afshan are after is Jalal (Avinash Tiwary), who controls the Mumbai underworld from faraway Spain, where he indulges his passion for bullfighting.

The torero and the wild bull in the villain's entry sequence together constitute one of the film's principal leitmotifs. The hunter and the quarry equation is what Ustara is out to reverse on behalf of the woman he has fallen hopelessly in love with.

The physical spaces that O'Romeo plays out in - notably a docked ship in Mumbai, a mansion in Spain, a bullfighting ring, a movie theatre (where the film's first bloodbath occurs, pre-credits) and an Irani cafe - have distinct palettes.

Red dominates the proceedings, but in one sequence - it is the first time we see Tamannaah (she plays Jalal's somewhat unhinged wife, Rabia, who paints to cling on to the last vestiges of sanity) - blood turns blue. The lady has a tragic reason for putting that mutation on a canvas.

Cinematographer Ben Bernhard (who shot Shaunak Sen's award-winning documentary All That Breathes), editor Aarif Sheikh, and production designer Mustafa Stationwala are all at the top of their games. That O'Romeo is a visual treat that never flags or loses any of its lustre is in large measure due to the perfection these technicians achieve.

Shahid Kapoor, collaborating with Bhardwaj for the fourth time, brings back memories of Kaminey and Haider with a performance that alternates between the manic and the brooding. His range is impressive.

Triptii Dimri does a great job of embodying a timorous femme fatale who will not go down without a fight. As both a wronged woman seeking redressal and a revenge-seeking terminator who needs no quarters, she is strikingly convincing.

Avinash Tiwary plays the villain with aplomb, while Nana Patekar as the man who knows more than anybody else around him, exudes a degree of poise that offers a counterpoint to the explosive action sequences that constitute the crux of the film.

O'Romeo is at once a love story, a revenge saga, and a crime drama. Every seemingly conflicting strand merges with the others without the lines separating (or linking) them being unduly overt. Rarely does a Hindi action film use the spirit of music and poetry to buttress emotional turmoil, physical strife, and excessive violence to the extent that this one does.

It is unsurprisingly A-rated, but we have seen worse. The violence in O'Romeo, graphic as it is, is never sans a moral context. Killing isn't easy, Ustara says to Afshan. When you kill, you cross a line, and a human becomes a monster, he adds. The screenplay is aware of that truth and never strays from it.