O’ Romeo movie review: Shahid Kapoor soars, Vishal Bhardwaj struggles in this meandering romantic action drama

In the middle of ‘O Romeo, Afshan, the revenge-filled girl from a rich music background, tells Ustara, the razor-wielding contract killer of the Mumbai underworld, that she is from Muzaffarnagar, but her gharana is Gwalior. Ustara responds as if his home is Lucknow, but his gharana is Mumbai. The conversation is writer-director Vishal Bhardwaj’s way of reminding us that his home is Bollywood street, but his gharana is Shakespearana. Imagine the doomed passion and fatal devotion of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet were stripped of Verona’s balconies and transplanted into the blood-soaked shores of Mumbai’s underworld, with our Romeo dancing to Gulzar’s lines ‘Neeche Paan Ki Dukan Upar Julie ka Makaan’ and slashing like a product of Quentin Tarantino. O’ Romeo isn’t a literal adaptation of the Bard. Instead, it borrows the emotional architecture – the helpless surrender to love amid inevitable destruction. It grafts it onto the saga of gangster Hussain Ustara (a volatile, charismatic anti-hero played by Shahid Kapur), drawn from a chapter in Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens of Mumbai. What promises to be a gritty crime thriller gradually reveals itself as Bhardwaj’s personal excavation of the twin impulses he has grappled with throughout his career: incandescent love and unflinching violence. A womaniser, Romeo has no shortage of shapely bodies, but he falls head over heels for a noble soul, Afshan (Tripti Dimri gets to showcase her acting chops), who is struggling to come to terms with a personal loss. He is tired of doing the bidding of intelligence officer Khan (Nana Patekar); she is determined to settle scores with the killers of her love (Vikrant Massey). In the ruthless hitman, she sees hope. As they join hands, sparks fly, but Bharadwaj leaves the pot simmering for far too long to hold our interest. Early in the film, it becomes palpable that it is only structured like a classic Bhardwaj; it doesn’t feel like one. The tangible chaos of Kaminey or the hair-raising conflict of Haider is sorely missing. The poetry provokes thought, but the prose doesn’t lead to emotional payoffs. Despite earnest performances, the motivations don’t add up, the leaps of faith don’t land, and the pathos doesn’t seep through the screen. It turns out to be a showreel of Shahid Kapur’s range where he gets to play out emotional and action set pieces with Tripti. Shahid’s entry is electric, and his screen presence is magnetic. In the so-called item number with Disha Patani, Shahid turns out to be the pièce de résistance. His abrasive chemistry with Patekar as the whimsical Khan provides some chuckle-worthy moments. But the eternal romantic in rage is once again let down by a predictable script and an uneven character arc in a wavering narrative. It seems there is nothing left to stir in the pot of stories of the Mumbai underworld. It is the same old story of a gangster working for the intelligence agencies to hunt down his previous gang lord, Jalal (Avinash Tiwary), w