Romeo + Juliet

Plot synopsis:
In Verona Beach, the Capulets and the Montagues are arch-rivals. The animosity of the older generation—Fulgencio and Gloria Capulet and Ted and Caroline Montague—is felt by their younger relatives. A gunfight between the Montague boys led by Benvolio, Romeo's cousin, and the Capulet boys led by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, creates chaos in the city. The Chief of Police, Captain Prince, reprimands the families, warning them that if such behavior continues, their lives "shall pay the forfeit of the peace".
Benvolio meets Romeo on a beach. While playing a game of pool they learn of a party being held by the Capulets that evening which they decide to gate-crash. Romeo agrees to come after discovering that Rosaline, with whom he is in love, is attending.
The Montague boys meet their friend, Mercutio, who has tickets to the Capulet party. Romeo takes the ecstasy Mercutio gave him and they proceed to the Capulet mansion. The effects of the drug and the party overwhelm Romeo, who goes to the restroom. While admiring an aquarium, he and Juliet see each other and fall instantly in love. Tybalt spots Romeo and vows to kill him for invading his family's home, but Fulgencio stops him.
Romeo and Juliet sneak into an elevator and kiss. The nurse spots them when the doors open and drags Juliet away, while revealing to her that Romeo is a Montague. At the same time, Romeo realizes that Juliet is a Capulet. Mercutio takes Romeo from the party, but he sneaks back to the mansion, hiding under Juliet’s balcony. Juliet emerges into the yard and proclaims her love for him before Romeo sneaks up behind her. Juliet warns him that he is risking his life, but Romeo tells her he does not care whether he is caught. Knowing her nurse is looking for her, Juliet tells him that, if he sends word by the following day, they will be betrothed. Romeo visits Father Lawrence, telling him he wants to marry Juliet. He agrees to marry the pair in hopes that their marriage will help ease the tensions between the families. Romeo passes the word on to Juliet’s nurse and the lovers are married.
Tybalt encounters Mercutio just as Romeo arrives. Romeo attempts to make peace, but Tybalt assaults him. Mercutio intervenes and batters Tybalt, and is about to finish him off by hitting him with a log when Romeo stops him. Tybalt then wounds Mercutio with a shard of glass, which Mercutio claims is merely "a scratch". But as he realizes the cut is much worse than he thought, Mercutio curses both the Montagues and the Capulets before dying in Romeo's arms. Enraged, Romeo chases after a fleeing Tybalt and guns him down.
Captain Prince banishes Romeo from the city. Romeo goes into hiding with Father Lawrence, who treats Romeo's injuries and says that, after some time passes, he will help Romeo and Juliet return to the city and reconcile with their family and friends. The nurse tells Romeo that Juliet is waiting for him. When Romeo climbs over Juliet's balcony, she kisses him and they consummate their marriage. Fulgencio decides Juliet will marry Dave Paris, the governor's son.
The next morning, Romeo narrowly escapes as Juliet's mother tells her that the family has promised she will marry Paris. She refuses to marry, so her father threatens to disown her. Her mother and nurse insist it would be in her best interest to marry Paris. To get out of this, Juliet runs away from home and sees Father Lawrence, very angrily imploring him to help her and threatening to commit suicide. Father Lawrence proposes she fake her own death and be put in the Capulet vault to awaken 24 hours later. Romeo will be told of the plot, sneak into the vault, and once reunited the two can travel to Mantua. He gives her the potion which mimics death. After saying goodnight to her mother, Juliet drinks the potion and falls into a coma. She is found in the morning, declared dead, and placed in the vault. Balthasar, one of Romeo's cousins, learns that Juliet is dead and tells Romeo, who is not home when the messenger arrives to tell him of the plan.
Romeo returns to Verona, where he buys poison. As he goes to the church, Captain Prince finds out he is back, and tries to capture him, without success. Father Lawrence learns that Romeo has no idea Juliet is alive. Romeo enters the church where Juliet lies and bids her goodbye. She awakens just as Romeo takes the poison; the two thus see each other before he dies. After he dies, Juliet picks up Romeo's gun and shoots herself in the head, dying instantly. The two lovers are discovered in each other's arms. Prince condemns both families, whose feuding led to such tragedy, and coroners remove the two bodies.

Tags: comedy, boring, murder, cult, clever, psychedelic, action, romantic, tragedy, suspenseful

Review:
Beautifully choreographed and shot, wonderfully acted by both the supporting cast and the main 2 stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and extremely sly modernization techniques to the dialogue.
The amazing thing about this movie is that it has managed to re-do Shakespeare's famous tragedy in a modern setting while still retaining its original dialogue.
I admit that I was a little apprehensive about seeing this movie, fearing that Luhrman had either destroyed the play's beauty and power by setting it in modern times, or had butchered Shakespeare's eloquent words by making them sound more modern.
Almost everything about this movie is just incredible.Luhrman brilliantly casted Claire Danes as fourteen-year-old Juliet.
I know some people criticize this film for destroying the romance and beauty of Shakespeare's words by setting the story in modern day Verona, but I feel that it only made the film more romantic.
If you're a fan of Shakespeare like me, I think you will enjoy this hip, yet still lovely, modernization of his most famous play ever..
Soon after that we are introduced to Juliet who is played by the beautiful Claire Danes, someone I haven't seen in too many movies.
Danes was emotionally pure and driven, and this is her best work to date aside from the critical darling, "My So-Called Life." No, the leads were cast with good reason - there couldn't have been any better.
Luhrmann's version of this classic tragedy plays to both a younger and older audience, adding touches such as the names of the guns being the names of swords; and he yet updates the setting, bringing the fantastic Verona, Italy to Verona Beach, Florida.
Everyone is familiar with William Shakespeare's boy-meets-girl love story, and it has already been interpreted into films, plays, TV adaptations and songs.
But Baz Luhrmann gives this world-known love story a modern-day twist, setting it in Verona Beach, and piling on the religious imagery.
The result is quite spectacular.Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play the star-crossed lovers, and, whilst the latter is sadly a little bland, never truly convincing us in her portrayal of Juliet's loss of innocence or torment of feelings towards the foe, DiCaprio completely redeems her performance.
This is epitomized in the opening shot of him, where the Leo is illuminated illustriously against the sunlight, and Radiohead's languid, sexy tune "Talk Show Host" plays.The film itself has "sexy" written all over it, and, with the Gen X teenagers as his target audience, I don't think Luhrmann would have things any other way.
But, unlike with that atrocity Moulin Rouge!, with Romeo + Juliet, the over-stylization is appropriate, making the movie more accessible to teens, for example, through gun warfare rather than swordplay, and the canny symbolisation of Queen Mab as a drug.
Romeo is presented exactly as the play does  at first, the mawkish, gawky, lovesick teenager, then, the fickle boy, and finally, the devoted and caring lover, and much of this loyalty to the play is due to the screenplay from Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, which maintains the original memorable dialogue and descriptions, but also dares to stray from the sidewalk in some of the plot turns, and the film completely benefits from it.
Craig Armstrong's score for the swimming pool scene is as stunning as it is original, and the use of non-original music, from Kym Mazelle to The Cardigans, give the film the added edge of cool, making Romeo + Juliet one of the boldest, sassiest and most unforgettable adaptations to date, and English Lit. GCSE has been made far more digestible for us kids across England.
Director Baz Luhrmann knew what he was doing when he cast Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio in the title roles of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Luhrmann creates a world where gun toting teens sport Hawaiian shirts and beach front brawls are an everyday event.Giving the classic play this modern twist makes for a new understanding of the text and brings the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets to a whole new level.
Shakespeare may be rolling around in his grave after seeing this film, but english classes all over the world can breathe a little easier when it comes time to take the R&J final exam because this new adaptation makes the theme remarkably understandable.Danes brings life and incentive to the character of Juliet.
Big names also lit up the credits of R&J with Paul Sorvino and Brian Dennehey as Capulet and Montague as well as Pete Postlethwaite as the star-cross'd lovers confidante, Friar Laurence.This is my favorite movie of all time and I believe it was sadly underrated..
But alas it suffers from another blessing which is also a curse: the story itself is so powerful that one can build any sort of film or play or whatever around it and have it be likely to work.
Admittedly, I first watched this movie when it came outbecause of Leo; eight years later (and seven years after middle school ended), I realize just how well-done this film actually is.
This film jump-started the trend of modern-day Shakespeare remakes, and I think it's the best one..
But with that freedom comes a brilliant opportunity of artistic expression from the director, and each choice of omission or interaction in this production was apparently made with great care to maintain the integrity of the story being told.To touch on comparisons between the 68 and 96 movies: don't try to tell me Leonard Whiting acted like he had any idea what he was saying.
After only watching a few minutes of this adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, I couldn't take much more of it.
I tried after a few minutes more but it's hard to take Leonardo DiCaprio who I believe is a very talented actor and Clare Dane who is just as talented playing in modern times.
If they had adapted Romeo and Juliet to more modern language, I think I would have bared the film in general.
Luhrmann's unoriginal reworking of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (the American youth gang scenario had been used many times before, once on film and over a dozen times on the stage) is a shallow experience, devoid of soul, with a feeble performance by Leonardo di Caprio.
If you want to see Romeo and Juliet on film, watch the 1968 version.
Call me old fashioned, but if a director interprets one of the finest theatrical works in the English language, it seems to me that he needs to do a better job than this.Harold Perrineau did a decent job at Mercutio in the context of a film that just doesn't get it done.
I think that his fatal mistake was choosing the setting of the movie to be in modern times.
In Romeo+Juliet, director/producer Baz Luhrmann takes the traditional story of "two star-crossed lovers," puts it in Verona Beach in about 1970, adds his own little motif of water, over-dramatises the whole story, chooses substandard performers, and to top it all, ignores half of Shakespeare's original text.In one of the first few scenes, through the chosen costumes, Luhrmann takes what was to some extent implied in the text, and makes Mercutio a transvestite homosexual, Tybalt a devil, and, using blatant stereotypes, Juliet becomes an angel, and Romeo a knight-in-shining- armour.
This may not have a huge effect, but when there are a number of similarly small events taken out, the effects add up, making what is an excellently written story into something much less powerful.One might think that, having not done too great a job in other aspects, Luhrmann might have done better on his choice of music.
For my ninth grade english class, I am currently studying William Shakespeare's tragic play Romeo + Juliet in both modern and old english versions.
I had never seen a more beautiful film.Baz Luhrmann's updated version of the play is absolutely stunning.
This is basically "Romeo and Juliet" in modern day dress full of arresting visuals, gunplay, loud 1990s music, wild dance numbers with all the cast members using Shakespeare's original dialogue!
The visuals are all incredible (director Buz Luhrmann always knows how to make a film look fantastic) and the movie almost never stops for a breath.
The casting and acting in this is all over the place.Leonardo DiCaprio (as Romeo) is a good actor, but he's just all wrong for this role.
I hated this movie not just because it was based on shakespeare's  play but because the acting and the camera direction was so stupid.
Many of you have probably read the original version of Romeo and Juliet, or maybe have even seen the play.
Modernizing Shakespeare for the teens of today is a good idea - but this movie falls terribly short.After seeing this movie (I can't believe I watched the whole thing - I guess I thought it would get better), I was thoroughly disgusted.
The idea to modernize "Romeo & Juliet" isn't that bad, but the idea to give the Shakespeare style laungue is, so bad in fact, it made me laugh.
The frequent freezes on the "swords" and "daggers" were totally pointless and wasted time.In conclusion, I think you would have been better off watching the Zefferelli version of Romeo and Juliet, which was classy and very accurate to the actual text.
If I can only have swords like these boys do.From beginning to end this movie grips you and breathes new modern (and socially understandable) language into this film.
He tried to make the whole thing so trendy and hip by affiliating gangs, and such, but it doesn't work and comes out pretty campy.This movie sold well to little girls who like Leo Dicaprio, but no true fan of literature or cinema for that matter would like it..
I generally dislike movies that attempt to set classics in modern times, and this is no exception.
Furthermore, setting Romeo and Juliet in modern times necessarily takes the play entirely out of context, especially when using the original dialogue.
I liked how fast it moved too, it was almost exhilarating in pace, and I think the film makers did that purposefully to empathise how rushed Romeo and Juliet's relationship was.
Baz Luhrmann's direction was also a disappointment, sometimes in the early scenes it was so over the top that I forgot I was watching a version of Romeo and Juliet and thought I was watching a flash cartoon.
I am 14 now, and I read Romeo and Juliet, the play, for English as most freshmen like me have.
I had to watch it in class and then the following weekend, I went out and bought it because I enjoyed it so much.I really don't like Shakespeare at all, and I don't know much about "how good" actors are speaking in Old English, but I thought overall, Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes were good at it.
The two were supposed to play best friends but they only seemed like casual acquaintances and "drug buddies" in this movie.The special effects were great, and the music was wonderful.
This is a movie today's teenagers will enjoy, but if you're older, I would think that you would like the '68 version because it keeps the traditional stuff.
I think the best thing about this movie is that it brought Shakespeare to millions of people who would never have normally appreciated it.
Hey, knock it if you like but I think anything that might get more people reading or appreciating the written word can't be that bad.Highly entertaining, a heartbreaking romance, and a visual feast, Romeo + Juliet is a movie I've treated myself to at least once a year since I first saw it in '96.
the best delivering person in this movie is the priest, who actually feels like shakespears' character.
the maiden and juliet's fiance are also decent but the rest of characters ( including romeo, who smoke and do drugs ) are really annoying, to say the least.i think that is about it, a failed attempt to exploit on shakespears' play.
There are good "updates of Shakespeare..." "West Side Story" and "Forbidden Planet..." and then there are films like THIS.
If on the other hand it was meant to appeal to a younger generation and to perhaps introduce Shakespeare to a whole new audience then it surely fails on the grounds that the original script is kept despite the modern day setting.
some reviewers see the the actors as trying to get through their lines as quickly as possible, but when you consider Leonardo Di Caprio when to Australia (flying Coach) to make a video version of the movie to convince studio execs to finance the project.The scene that makes the movie, the scene everyone remember is Romeo dressed as knight, falling in love through a fish tank with Juliet dressed as angel.
As such, the film is hip and sexy, and Old Bill's yarn has much to offer, but while Claire Danes' Juliet is the very picture of grace and innocence, Leonardo di Caprio - undoubtedly a fine young actor - seems out of place as Romeo, and he's upstaged in the good looks department by Paul Rudd as Paris.
There's a show-stopping dance number (part of a drug-induced hallucination) at the masked ball where the two lovers first meet, and the second half of the film is powered by a raw emotional intensity, but a truly radical revision of the play might have involved the scrapping of Shakespeare's text altogether and the substitution of 90s dialogue to match the visuals..
She didn't have enough feeling, especially in the balcony scene.If you want to see a REAL performance of "Romeo and Juliet," rent the 1968 version directed by Franco Zefferelli and narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier..
Horrendous version of the Shakespeare tragedy directed by horrendous hack Baz Luhrmann, up there with Joel Schumacher and Danny Boyle among my five least favorite directors of all time.This is "Romeo and Juliet" for the MTV generation, the movie equivalent of a shark, afraid that if it slows down for even a moment it will die.
Baz Luhrmann does not know how to direct and how to please audience.If you want to see a good Romeo and Juliet film, then you should see the one that was made in 1968-that one was really good.
The most popular love story in history, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, converted to modern day sets.
The director and writer of the movie decided to handle the conflicts between modern day sets and Shakespeare's original texts with the means of comedy.
If you want to see a good adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, see the 1968, Zeffirelli version.
If you want Grand Theft Auto:The Movie, this is the film for you.Admittedly, the cast is great and boasts superb performances from the young leads Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
If one wanted to see a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, watching West Side Story would be a much better bet.
Her style is flat, and she delivers the lines with as much talent as the average highschooler would in a school production.The director had what could have been a very powerful and entertaining movie, but undermines it with the casting of two singularly unsuited actors in the title roles for the sake of drawing more of the MTV teenage crowd to the box office.For a better rendition of Juliet, I suggest Olivia Hussey in the 1968 Zeffirelli version.
Changing the setting of Shakespeare's plays for film adaptations isn't a new thing.
My only complaint about the film is that the modernization of the story also makes Romeo and Juliet's drama and romance seem overly trite and self important in a way that I found annoying.
I like how they made the movie Romeo+Juliet that was a good movie.
Other stand-out performances I would like to mention are the strong characterization of Mercutio played by the best Harold Perrineau I have seen while in the part of Tybalt John Leguizamo excels himself either.The settings and direction of this movie are plain fantastic from my point of view.
Without the original lyrics used in this adaption I could imagine Romeo + Juliet to be an absolutely intoxicating flick but the dreamlike poetry propel it's atmosphere to another level.I like movies to tell me an interesting story in the first place and showcase it the way it feels right.
I'm not eager to watch him play Shakespeare on the stage.By contrast, Claire Danes is the perfect Juliet.
This is a neat modern adaptation of William Shakespeare's classic and tragic tale, Romeo and Juliet, where the feuding families of the Montagues and the Capulets are foretold in the Italian city of Verona.
The lives and affair of star-crossed lovers Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet are complicated by their feuding families.Though set in modern times, this movie still follows Shakespeare's play somewhat to a T, helped by the actors' theatrical delivery of the original dialog, the intense drama and the enchanting story.
Director Baz Luhrmann did a great job putting together the movie, placing his own unique style into the play but retaining the original intent of the story.
Or if you're a Leo fan, you could always just re-watch James Cameron's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, if you actually want to ENJOY a movie..
I just think that the style in Romeo + Juliet gave the notion that if it wasn't for the camera work, the people behind the film would belive that you would just get bored..
He obviously means to prove he's a serious actor, but that all goes out the window when you consider the fact that he's been in a movie where Mercutio dresses up like Marilyn Monroe.I won't waste any more time groaning over the terrible acting, because Luhrmann's woeful misplacement of Shakespeare's worst work ever in 1990s California is enough to bemoan this filth.
I'm watching "I love the 90s right now and they just talked about ROMEO + JULIET.
Who does Luhrmann think he is by adapting the brilliant Shakespeare play into a modern context?