Word: medak
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Romeo Is Bleeding directed by Peter Medak starring Gary Oldman, Lena Olin and Juliette Lewis...
With all the necessary trappings, "Romeo is Bleeding" should be quintessential film noir. It is instead a dark and muddled mess with little style and even less interest. Borrowing heavily from past Film noir in everything from plot to music to costuming, director Peter Medak ("Salome", "The Krays") crosses the line from paying homage to being simply unoriginal...
...film's first half we watch Jack volley between his inexplicably loyal wife Natalie (Annabella Sciorra) and his submissive moll Sheri (Juliette Lewis), all the while wrestling with his conscience. Because the formula would not be complete without a furtive villain force, Medak is compelled to introduce Russian mobster Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin) into Jack's dysfunctional life. Fueled by lust and fear, Jack is either chasing or being chased by this femme fatale from hell...
...narrates the film in voice-over and, like that all-too familiar friend who can never quite capture the excitement of a story in its retelling, he manages to bury a potentially interesting tale under unnecessary details and tangents. In addition, the setting is both murky and disconcertingly dark. Medak takes a literal approach to film noir everything is bathed in black. As a result, dialogue and activity are lost in the shadows...
What plagues the film most is its unbalanced treatment of character development. The eponymous Romeo is overdeveloped, while Mona and the other female roles are paper-thin. Jack is basically a greedy bastard primarily concerned with satiating his appetites. Through incessant and insufferably cliched voice-over introspection, however, Medak insists that Jack is a man of true depth. He is not, and he does not deserve all the attention paid...