diveinthedark-89834
If you come from a dirty city centre like I do (Central Norwich, UK in my case !) you'll love this !Quite an dark,sinister plot. Gary Oldman has to protect a Russian hit woman as a cop, but kill her as a member of a mob. Naturally the sleazy,erotic style of the film involves him 2-timing his wife, not only with the hit woman but also with Juliette Lewis (a waitress).Plenty of dirty urban landscapes/structures for all you other city rats! Plenty of scantily dressed girls in sexually uncompromising situations ! Plenty of violence, especially dismemberment! Yes, this is the ultimate dirty,violent + generally nihilistic metropolitan film !
chaos-rampant
This has the basic fulcrum of noir; red-haired devilish femme fatale, the schmuck who is bedeviled by desire for sex and money, looking bamboozled while being smitten by cruelly ironic fate, desire that bends reality and manifests in offbeat ways. I do like that we have it dictating metaphorical spaces of being lured and trapped by that desire.A hole in the ground that he has to keep feeding with money. Watching through binoculars at sex across the street, inflamming the desire. A dream where he's inside a giant ferry wheel and buffed around while she is playing his life at dice down below. The embarrassment of rolling on the floor with her when his colleagues walk through the door. It ends in an aptly noirish way, quoting Detour, where he's been the narrator gone mad as he waits hopelessly in some desert limbo, flicking through the photo-album that chronicles a life wasted when desire entered the pictures and all this (diner, photos) as being trapped in his own mind that relives the past and is conjuring the film itself.Even that is rather intermittent here, not the result of focused vision like the Coens or Almodovar did. Truth be told, I'm simply not too enamored of the obviousness that accompanies many of these modern attempts at film noir. It's like an excessively made up face wearing with some effort a selfconscious grimace as it makes its way through the amoral occasion. For whatever reason I am reminded a lot of Lynne's attempt at Lolita; something that was elusively fluid in its original guise, stultified by too much focus on grooming appearances.Oldman affects his usual twitching self, rather apt in the whole thing. The femme fatale can be overtly sexual in ways she couldn't in Hays code days.Noir Meter: 3/4 | Neo-noir or post noir? Neo
tom-koppen
If you're looking for realism and seriousness don't watch it. Always complaining and whining about over-acting don't watch this. Go see Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant instead if you can handle the realism in that movie at least, has a bit of over-acting too though.Gary Oldman, Lena Olin and Roy Scheider are absolutely brilliant and super-cool in this movie.Beautiful entertaining piece of artwork. Extremely violent and very sexy.I've read a few negative reviews about this movie. I suppose those people can't relate to this. Maybe they never crossed a line that shouldn't be crossed and never as a result of this experienced the inescapable downward spiral leading straight to oblivion. Lucky them.
mrcoolsoul
I never usually write on these forums but such a low score for what I consider to be a masterpiece of acting and film-making compelled me to express my opinion.I must admit that I have always preferred films which are narrated (if you note the success of the Shawshank redemption, it is obvious that I am not alone in this) and 'Romeo is Bleeding' is no exception! The acting (in my humble opinion (i never attended film school and didn't take a degree in media studies)) is absolutely fantastic (Gary Oldman can do no wrong) and the storyline is both engrossing and compelling. The film has every element which I crave, both a story to die for and the most powerful characters to ever bring homicidal mania to the screen. The end result is a roller-coaster of a movie portraying the inevitable emotional and spiritual demise of those who sell their soul for temporary material and physical gratification. The most important message I inferred from this movie is, if you are lucky enough to find true love in this life, then treasure it and protect it with your entire being. Once you have it and lose it, the worthlessness of your existence will only be compounded by its loss, and your life will be a metaphorical tumbleweed cast adrift in a desolate desert of despair.F*ckin great movie tho - 10/10
AD
