Rating : ⭐
Genre: Action
Year: 2026
Running time: 3 hours 32 minutes
Director: Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Nana Patekar, Tripti Dimri
Kid rating: PG-15
I’ll start with a confession: I’m a big Vishal Bhardwaj fan. His films like Maqbool and Kaminey are, in my view, modern cult classics – layered, intelligent, and endlessly rewatchable. So when I heard about O’ Romeo, I expected something equally compelling. Apparently Bhardwaj himself believed this film might become his biggest success. Unfortunately, after watching it—or at least half of it—I’m left wondering how that confidence came about.
Because O Romeo is, quite frankly, a hot mess.
A Promising Setup… on Paper
The film is a romantic action thriller set in Bombay in 1994. It stars Shahid Kapoor as Ustra, a gangster-hitman who earns his nickname from his preferred murder weapon: a barber’s blade. The cast is impressive: Triptii Dimri, Nana Patekar, Avinash Tiwary, along with appearances by Tamannaah Bhatia, Disha Patani, and veteran actor Farida Jalal.
The story loosely draws inspiration from the book Mafia Queens of Mumbai by S Hussain Zaidi. The plot revolves around Ustra’s life in the criminal underworld, assassination contracts, rival gangs, and a revenge-driven widow named Afshan (Dimri) who wants a corrupt police officer dead.
Unfortunately, that’s where the coherence ends.
Too Many Characters, Too Little Sense
The film throws a dizzying number of characters and subplots at the audience. There are mob bosses operating from Spain, intelligence officers manipulating events from the shadows, revenge plots, drug networks, and romantic tension between Ustra and Afshan.
Instead of feeling rich and layered, the narrative simply feels chaotic. Scenes jump from one exaggerated set piece to another with little emotional or logical grounding.
Shahid Kapoor Goes Full Volume
Let me be clear: Shahid Kapoor is a fantastic actor. He can be charming, intense, funny, and vulnerable. But here he’s asked to play Ustra as a loud, swaggering, almost cartoonish hitman. The character is arrogant, bombastic, and constantly performing masculinity at maximum volume. Whatever nuance Bhardwaj usually brings to his characters seems to have disappeared.
At one point, Ustra single-handedly fights off what feels like an entire army inside an empty theater while gleefully slaughtering his enemies. The scene is supposed to be thrilling, but ends up feeling absurd and overdone.
Logic Takes a Holiday
The film’s logic often borders on the absurd. The hero Ustra displays very little intelligence; you’d think he’d have his wits about him given his profession. Fortunately for him, his enemies don’t do much better. Afshan, the widow who recruits Ustra for revenge, is initially portrayed as someone who can barely hold a gun. Yet later in the film she suddenly appears capable of rescuing Ustra and his associates from trained sharpshooters.
Moments like these make it impossible to take the story seriously. It feels less like a crime drama and more like an accidental parody of one.
The Cast Deserves Better
The frustrating part is that the cast is genuinely talented. Triptii Dimri does what she can with the material. Nana Patekar – usually a magnetic presence – feels oddly wasted. Avinash Tiwary plays the antagonist Jalaluddin Shah Jalal, though the role never quite lands with the menace it aims for.
Meanwhile, Disha Patani appears briefly in what is essentially an item-number cameo. Was there ever an actress under that plentiful cleavage? With the way her career is going, we shall never know. Farida Jalal plays Ustra’s grandmother, spewing the choicest of gaalis, but also repeatedly urging him to become a better person (as golden hearted Bollywood grandmothers are often wont to do) – a moral appeal that falls entirely on deaf ears.
One Bright Spot . . . but oh, so fleeting
If there was one thing I genuinely liked in the half of the film I watched, it was a musical number. The music – also composed by Vishal Bhardwaj – has flashes of the creativity he’s known for.
But one good song cannot rescue a film this chaotic.
Final Verdict
I rarely walk out of movies halfway. But O’ Romeo managed to push me to that point. For a filmmaker as refined and insightful as Vishal Bhardwaj, the film feels bafflingly crude and overblown. The storytelling lacks focus, the characters lack depth, and the spectacle quickly becomes exhausting. The film eventually flopped at the box office, which honestly isn’t surprising.
As a longtime admirer of Bhardwaj’s work, I say this with some regret—but O’ Romeo is easily one of the most disappointing films I’ve seen.
Kidwise: Violent; unsuitable for younger kids.
