O'Romeo Movie Review: Love in the Modern World?

Ustara (Shahid Kapoor) is a stone-hearted enforcer for the crime syndicate led by the aging Ismail Khan (Nana Patekar). He is also a bloodthirsty womaniser - the kind of man who leaves a trail of broken hearts and bruised bodies. That is, until he meets Afshan (Triptii Dimri), a fiery young woman whose defiance cuts through his armour. Their attraction is immediate and dangerous, because Afshan is the sister of Jalal (Avinash Tiwary), a rival gang leader locked in a brutal turf war with Ismail Khan. What follows is a forbidden love that ignites a powder keg of vengeance, betrayal and an underworld shake-up that spares no one. The tale, as the overview promises, is one of unrequited passion - but whose passion remains unanswered is a question the film keeps shifting.

Bhardwaj has always wielded music as a narrative weapon, and O’Romeo is no exception. The soundtrack, composed by a returning Vishal Bhardwaj and lyrics by Gulzar, hums with folk-inflected melancholy and urgent percussive beats. One song in particular, a duet shot inside a burning chai shop, captures the feverish tension of the central relationship. The cinematography by Hemant Chaturvedi paints Lucknow’s bylanes and godowns in murky ambers and bruised blues, giving the violence a tactile, almost grimy physicality. Yet for all its sensory splendour, the film loses its way in the second hour.

The biggest problem is pacing. The first act sets up Ustara’s brutality with effective economy - a silent sequence where he dismantles a rival’s henchmen to the rhythm of a folk song is vintage Bhardwaj. But the middle stretch becomes a repetitive cycle of Ustara and Afshan meeting in stolen moments while gang politics churn in the background. The script, co-written by Bhardwaj and Abbas Tyrewala, leans too heavily on voiceover from Ustara’s younger sidekick Chhotu (Hussain Dalal), whose comic relief wears thin. By the time the third-act bloodbath arrives, the emotional stakes have been diluted by so many subplots - including a tiresome subplot involving a money launderer played by Vikrant Massey as Mehboob Qureshi - that the tragedy feels less fated and more exhausting.

Shahid Kapoor gives a committed performance, but his Ustara is a one-note creation for too long. He snarls, he glares, he breaks a man’s wrist with cold precision - but the vulnerability that the character arc demands arrives too late and too briefly. Triptii Dimri brings ferocity to Afshan, yet she is given little to do beyond being desired and endangered. Avinash Tiwary as Jalal is a snarling presence, but his motivations are sketched in haste. Nana Patekar, as always, steals every scene, but his Ismail Khan is written with more interest than anyone else - a chess-playing old lion whose regret feels more real than Ustara’s love. Farida Jalal as Dadi provides rare warmth, while Anubha Fatehpuria’s Shilpa Chachi adds a welcome dose of sharp-tongued pragmatism.

What ultimately sinks O’Romeo is its refusal to commit to its core romance. The title suggests a story about a man undone by love, but the film spends far more time on gang warfare logistics than on the chemistry that is meant to justify the tragedy. The “unrequited passion” of the overview is ambiguous, and not in a satisfying way - it feels like indecision. Bhardwaj has always balanced action and emotion beautifully (Maqbool remains a masterclass), but here the scales tip so heavily toward blood that the romance becomes an afterthought.

Pros

• Vishal Bhardwaj’s atmospheric direction and musical score remain peerless in Hindi cinema
• Cinematography that turns everyday Lucknow into a character of grimy beauty
• Strong supporting turns from Nana Patekar, Farida Jalal and Avinash Tiwary
• A handful of genuinely striking action set pieces, especially the climax

Cons

• Bloating runtime of 178 minutes with a sagging middle act
• Shahid Kapoor’s Ustara is underwritten, making his supposed transformation feel unearned
• Triptii Dimri’s Afshan lacks agency beyond being the object of desire
• Gang-war subplots crowd out the central romance, diluting the emotional core
• The film borrows Shakespearean structure but forgets the poetry of the original

O’Romeo is a flawed epic from a director who has earned the right to swing big. It has passages of breathtaking craft - a song, a shot, a line of dialogue - that remind you why Bhardwaj is one of India’s most visionary filmmakers. But the film’s refusal to either fully embrace the romance or fully commit to the gangster tragedy leaves it stranded in no-man’s-land. For every moment that works, there are twenty minutes of sprawl. Watch it for the music, for Nana Patekar’s weary gravitas, and for the ambition. Just don’t expect your heart to be broken the way the title promises. A noble failure, but a failure nonetheless.