A powerful idea exploits the dark mind of Shakespeare

Rating: 9/10 (24 January 2010)

When Romeo Montague (Di Caprio) falls in love with Juliet Capulet (Danes) their families' rivalries escalate in the fair city of Verona.
William Shakespeare's tragic love play gets a dramatic current world make over in this vigorous and boisterous film that at 14 years old is still relevant, still powerful and will continue to be used in education to get the points of powerful politics and freestyle love across.
At the time of its release we were in a state of film where violence was everything. Pulp Fiction had dazzled and outraged people all over the world a few years previously, True Romance in comparison to this 1996 picture had a brave love at first sight plot with bloody violence that Baz Luhrmann capitalized on to make a brutally fine adaptation.
The film opens tremendously, capturing the whole film in essence with a fast montage of shots and an anticipation of what is to come. The TV fading away with a news report is the last thing you would expect from a Shakespeare work but what is more unusual is what is to follow.
Pulling up at a gas station members of the Capulet family have a violent confrontation in a shoot out with members from the Montague household. Guns, gas and gross misconduct may be as violent and as the famous playwright intended and to implement his words into this modern telling is a startling contrast and personally, I believe this is such an important technique to making this film so exciting and universally unique.
What the director has done is comprehend modern trends. He followed the trend of current cinema so that we could all appreciate the context and by taking the words of Shakespeare has made it easier to comprehend, a startling technique that has been such a beneficiary to school exams and also for pure viewing pleasure. Whilst it has been many years since I have read the play and studied it for my G.C.S.E's I recall watching and being baffled and now more years on I can still appreciate how powerful and how spoken this picture is.
The work that has been achieved here is spoken through its various stars with Leonardo Di Caprio made a sex symbol and Claire Danes going on with more romantic roles. Their first meeting in the film through a fish tank is beautifully choreographed, a section that doesn't feel too cheesy thanks to the calm playing of the song 'Kissing You'.
The love at first sight ideology has been worked to death in modern cinema in romantic comedy dramas and here it is tackled as in Shakespeare's mind, as pure and as lust that is crossed with startling rivalry.
The film boasts a courageous soundtrack revelling in gorgeous settings that do justice to a story so strong, and yet so dark. This is a great film, taking a tragic story and turning into a modern telling of love repression and violence.