Romeo + Juliet

3.67
    Romeo + Juliet
    1996

    Synopsis

    In director Baz Luhrmann's contemporary take on William Shakespeare's classic tragedy, the Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering suburb of Verona Beach, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly wed. Though the film is visually modern, the bard's dialogue remains.

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    Cast

    • Leonardo DiCaprioRomeo
    • Claire DanesJuliet
    • Jesse BradfordBalthasar
    • Vondie Curtis-HallCaptain Prince
    • Brian DennehyTed Montague
    • John LeguizamoTybalt
    • Miriam MargolyesNurse
    • Harold PerrineauMercutio
    • Christina PicklesCaroline Montague
    • Pete PostlethwaiteFather Laurence

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Rolling Stone

      Amid the clamor from outraged purists and Shakespeare spinning in his Stratford-on-Avon, England, grave, you should notice that Luhrmann and his two bright angels have shaken up a 400-year-old play without losing its touching, poetic innocence.
    • 90

      Slate

      It may be the most visually imaginative Shakespeare film since Akira Kurosawa's "Ran", and certainly one of the more operatic Hollywood creations of recent years.
    • 89

      Austin Chronicle

      This Romeo & Juliet is a rich visual feast, besotted with the fervor of its acrobatic camerawork and kinetic staging and its mind-bending aggregation of unrelated but resonant fragments of 20th-century iconography.
    • 75

      ReelViews

      While such a loud, brash interpretation may not go down in cinematic history as the definitive version of the play, hopefully it will open a few eyes and widen the audience willing to venture into any movie bearing the credit "based on the play by William Shakespeare."
    • 75

      The A.V. Club

      For all the hubbub, the film succeeds in relating Shakespeare to modern times, thanks mainly to the use of energetic pop music and the gameness of the performers.
    • 60

      The New York Times

      Mr. Luhrmann's frenetic hodgepodge actually amounts to a witty and sometimes successful experiment, an attempt to reinvent "Romeo and Juliet" in the hyperkinetic vocabulary of post-modern kitsch. This is headache Shakespeare, but there's method to its madness.
    • 50

      Chicago Sun-Times

      I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of "Romeo & Juliet" makes of Shakespeare's tragedy.
    • 40

      Washington Post

      The movie, a frenetic, explosive experience full of car crashes and gun battles, is original and exhilarating. But more often, it's so overwhelming, it'll make you want to watch "Die Hard With a Vengeance" for peace and quiet.

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