O' ROMEO : MOVIE REVIEW 
2 STARS / 5  (AVERAGE)
DIRECTOR : VISHAL BHARDWAJ 
CAST : TRIPTII DIMRI, SHAHID KAPOOR 
TAMANNAAH BHATIA, NANA PATEKAR
HINDI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES AVAILABLE)
RELEASE : FEBRUARY 2026 
 
 
O' Romeo is a depressing, dispiriting and mostly empty-headed start to 2026, especially at a time when mainstream Hindi cinema is experiencing a long-term decline due to the shortage of strong directors and a lack of true movie-stars. Lavishly mounted at Rs.125 crore ($14 million), it is no surprise that the film has underperformed at the box office, grossing just Rs. 70 crore by the second Saturday, proving that the post-KGF mainstream Indian audience still has some taste remaining. Unconventional film-maker Vishal Bhardwaj selects a promising template (young lady seeks to recruit a gangster for revenge against a big cabal but then the more dreaded thing called love happens) however the writing and direction is so poorly developed that a meaningful audience "pull" is impossible. Pic abounds with badly choreographed extreme violence and mindless killing, as if human life can be crunched through like popcorn. Nadiadwalla Grandson Productions shows a shocking lack of judgement pouring so much money into such a shoddily made picture.
 
The story backbone has potential to stand and sprint. Inspired by a story from Hussain Zaidi's book "Mafia Queens of Mumbai" (although Bhardwaj also seems to have been strongly influenced by several elements from "Animal" (2023), the film involves a young lady Afsha Qureshi (played by Triptii Dimri)  whose life is destroyed by entanglement with a powerful criminal. She survives but is bent on revenge and seeks to recruit a smaller local gangster Ustara (Shahid Kapoor) in Mumbai to finish off the men who wronged her. The plan looks like it may work, especially as Ustara has the outstanding ability to single-handedly kill hundreds of attackers. At the end a trip to baroque Spain and bull-rings await, to give the film an au courant internationally remunerative feel. However, Ustara - whoever would have guessed it - falls for delicately pretty Afsha and the violent cauldron mellows even as it curdles.  
 
Vishal Bhardwaj, Shahid Kapoor, Triptii Dimri, Tamannaah Bhatia - all four principals have erred majorly in selecting this roughly made, gory, lobotomized bull. Two things could have actually made the movie work - a more detailed and convincing build-up of the emotional dynamics behind the movie's relationships, and better action choreography than the laugh-worthy clown-show on display. The movie's actual screenplay seems to have been penned by a ten year old - so broad and scatter-shot is the narrative detailing. Ustara is shown to live on a docked ship and there is a fight sequence at the start inside a movie theatre where he smashes and kills an army of attackers with cartoonish moves while blood spurts and skulls are crushed. This beginning part, supposedly set in Mumbai, is so incongruous that I really had difficulty believing whether I was watching a major production or a cancelled pilot episode (Khalid Mohamed had remarked that the Mumbai which Bhardwaj showed in 'Maqbool' looked more like the backwaters of Bhopal). It is only when Afsha's story enters the mix that some emotional anchoring weighs in. 
 
However, the subsequent emotional angle between Ustara and Afsha is poorly developed - the finer strokes and plot development in building a strong romantic relationship is simply not there - in its place, you have an unfocused Bhardwaj's flippant attitude, his preference for humourous sequences and jokes falling flat in the face of weak narrative flesh, and repeated cartoonish bursts of violence that disclose the film's overall low standards of film-making. The big villain fooling around in his expensive estate in Spain is a muscled, one-dimensional brute - why the heck should you care a fig if he is eliminated in one second ?  
 
The big problem in mainstream Indian cinema after 2018 is that the third-rate "KGF" (and later its sequel) convinced too many in the industry that terrible action choreography, humans cut down like swatted mosquitoes and a Neanderthal level of narration would suffice to kill the box office if enough rocks were similarly lobbed at the audience. Bhardwaj's "Kaminey" (2009) also sported feckless violence. It is reported that Bhardwaj was inspired by Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" (1994) amongst other films. Tarantino might be a mixed bag, but in action choreography he has been brutally efficient in showcasing a level of visceral power that wows action aficionados. "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) had realistic blood-'n'-violence that few of the movies at the time had the daring to show, all the way to 'Django Unchained' (2012) whose bursts of violence stun with their focused fury. Bhardwaj seems to have learned none of these action edicts. 
 
A daring move, however, occurs later in the movie when a person enters into marriage for a very specific objective, a la the great espionage thrillers of yore. There was great potential for the swirling treacherous nature of this relationship to be explored but this casual movie passes on that. When the treachery is exposed, there is no conflict or finer layer to the lashback, instead there is just blunt savage action making you wonder what kind of plastic brutes truly permeate this artless enterprise. The ending in Spain (or a set which resembles festive Spain) save for one or two scenes, is predictable trashy carnage. 
 
Tamannaah Bhatia enjoys superstar status with her sizzling dance songs but her acting assignments are much more mediocre - here, her role's ending would have to be one of the worst choices she's ever made. Shahid Kapoor again discloses a knack for good acting, his Ustara's violent vehemence disarmingly wedded to a charming, jocular demeanour but the film does not have adequate use for him. Triptii Dimri continues to impress with her emotive finery, sensitively essaying the role of a grieving young lady bent on revenge, her delicately beautiful face swirling underneath with discontent, grief and determination. Vishal Bhardwaj however fails on all fronts - he has to seriously reflect on what made his 'Maqbool' of twenty-three years earlier such an effective and memorable movie ; whereas his later lavishly funded ventures laced with useless action and violence are more like schoolboy fantasies which need to be collated and submitted to film-school as lessons on how not to make cinema.   
 
 
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