Shahid Kapoor-Triptii Dimri film is high on style and swag, low on substance
4 min readFeb 13, 2026 03:16 PM IST
O Romeo Movie Review & Rating: Gangsters. Cops. Killers. O Romeo is Vishal Bharadwaj’s turning his hand to a revenge drama served hot, with colourful characters ricocheting off each other, pausing for a telling dialogue here, a shoot-out there, and, yes, bursting into a song with lyrics written by Gulzar. When was the last time you heard ‘dubla’ in a Bollywood song? I was left smiling in the dark.
But the thing with building your scaffold on style and swag is that you end up skating on thin substance, and this reunion of Bharadwaj with Shahid Kapoor, working off a plot based on Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens Of Mumbai, is left swinging between highs and lows.
Kapoor occasionally breaks free of his carefully curated raffish look comprising full-body tattoos and scruffy beard, letting the actor peek through. He’s called Ustara because he wields that very specific kind of blade with great dexterity, and the film is full of his ferocious handiwork, as he goes about slicing and dicing through countless choreographed-for-difference bodies.
While Shahid Kapoor is the fulcrum, as he was when he fronted Kaminey, Haider and the ill-fated Rangoon, other characters are given space too, which does help. Tripti Dimri, as Afshan, the wounded woman who asks Ustara to do the thing that he does best, makes her presence felt, through an arc which allows her to be heartbroken as well as feral. The other two, Tamannah Bhatia and Disha Patani, have smaller roles, but do what they need to, before the men take charge again, cracking bones and cleaving heads.
The only two people who can keep Ustara in check are Nana Patekar’s heavy-set cop, along with Farida Jalal’s grandma who enjoys a salty turn of phrase. Hussain Dalal, as the hero’s best friend, has a few solid moments. This being Bharadwaj, quirk is an essential trait: Rahul Deshpande plays a bent cop with a flair for classical music. Vikrant Massey has a special appearance, and leaves a mark.
As always, the ‘hero’ can only be effective if the villain has ‘dum’, and here Avinash Tiwary, all buff and bare-chested as he goes about besting bulls in a Spanish ring, works hard at being one. Why Spain? We aren’t given any credible explanations, and the post-interval portion is one action set-piece after another in such locations as Mumbai’s Ganapati visarjan or local trains, or Spanish haciendas and bull-rings, the job here clearly being to find creative ways of slashing through humans.
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The ‘Romeo’ bit is a bit of a misnomer. The film doesn’t work as well in the romance department as it thinks it does. Ustara and Afshan do share a few soft moments, but they needed to have kindled more. The film itself is handsomely mounted, with some well-shot action sequences– one which Shahid Kapoor and Triptii Dimri ace as a shooting-and-scooting pair– but I kept wanting to feel more.
Yes, it’s more sure-footed than Bharadwaj’s recent slate — Kuttey, Fursat, Charlie Chopra — but I want the Bharadwaj who gave us the marvellous Maqbool and the kinetic Kaminey, back.
O Romeo movie cast: Shahid Kapoor, Tripti Dimri, Nana Patekar, Avinash Tiwary, Farida Jalal, Hussain Dalal, Tamannah Bhatia, Disha Patani, Rahul Deshpande, Vikrant Massey
O Romeo movie director: Vishal Bharadwaj
O Romeo movie rating: 2.5 stars
