Among the many interesting movie trends and fads of the 1990s, the film noir genre experienced a bit of a resurgence as a number of directors attempted to bring some then-modern flair to the lurid mystery and crime thrillers they’d loved when they were younger. Unfortunately, while critics were largely supportive of titles like The Grifters and After Dark, My Sweet, audiences had less interest and mostly ignored them. One of the bigger casualties of this wave was the seedy thriller Romeo Is Bleeding, which neither scored particularly good reviews nor made any money. At the time of its release, no one seemed to have any interest in this movie.
Romeo Is Bleeding didn’t fade into total obscurity, however. Something about the picture lingered in the minds of viewers who’d seen it. Specifically, the performances by stars Gary Oldman and Lena Olin were singled out for praise even by those who dismissed the rest of it. Slowly, over time, the film built a cult audience of fans catching it in one-off screenings or on home video until, finally, its reputation started to turn around and more people recognized it as a devilish black comedy with one of the most riotously fun movie villains of the decade.
| Title: | Romeo Is Bleeding |
| Year of Release: | 1993 – Film festivals 1994 – American theatrical release |
| Director: | Peter Medak |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | DVD Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Romeo Is Bleeding may well be one of the dirtiest, sweatiest, bloodiest, and just plain sleaziest movies of the 1990s. The supposed hero of the piece is an unlikable dirtbag who mostly surrounds himself with other like-minded individuals. Crooked New York City cop Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman, looking quite young and affecting a heavy-handed Brooklyn accent) has a lucrative side gig accepting large cash payments to notify a local Mob outfit whenever any of their former associates try to turn state evidence and work with federal prosecutors. Jack stops short of actually killing anyone himself, but has few compunctions about giving up a witness’s location so that his Mafia buddies can tie up loose ends on their own. After all, these guys are all scum. The world’s better off without them anyway, right? Why shouldn’t Jack profit a little off their infighting?
Even aside from the bribe-taking, Jack isn’t exactly a paragon of virtue in any other respect. He pretends to be devoted to his wife (Annabella Sciorra), and may even convince himself of that story, but keeps a floozie cocktail waitress (Juliette Lewis) on the side and chases just about any skirt in his vicinity. He’s pretty far from being an upstanding fella.
When one of Jack’s tip-offs goes south and results in the murders of a bunch of cops in addition to the intended target, the head crime boss (Roy Scheider) orders Jack to clean up the mess himself, by way of personally taking out crazy Russian hitwoman Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin), who knows too much and is a threat to the organization. Jack is very uneasy about this but feels backed into a corner when his supposed friends threaten his family and his own physical safety. Complicating matters for him, Mona turns out to be a little… maybe a lot… unstable and very hard to kill. She’s also sexy as hell and quick to use her feminine wiles on him, which leaves poor Jack’s primitive caveman brain reeling with confusion about which side he should be on.
Romeo Is Bleeding is a nutso movie about nutso characters who do totally nutso things. The plot, scripted by Road House screenwriter Hilary Henkin, gets crazier and crazier as it goes along, and doesn’t entirely make sense in its journey to the final twist, but has a really good time getting there. Riding atop this crazy train is Olin’s turn as Mona, a stone-cold psychopath who gets off on murder and violence, and never so much as hesitates when deciding to make a tremendous personal sacrifice in order to fake her own death. The character is a total blast, and Olin clearly had the time of her life playing the role. The delight in her performance is infectious and carries through the whole production.
The movie is stacked with a great cast. In addition to those already mentioned, other notable faces to appear include James Cromwell as a fed, Dennis Farina as a former Mafioso, Michael Wincott as an enforcer, and Ron Perlman as a dirty lawyer. Hungarian-British director Peter Medak had just come off making a couple of more respectable crime pictures in England with The Krays (1990) and Let Him Have It (1991), and hoped this project would offer him a big break into the American market. Sadly, that didn’t work out.
Studio Gramercy Pictures had no idea how to promote the movie to make it look appealing. Both critics and the few audiences who bothered to see it were mostly left confounded by the over-the-top tone, resulting in a box office flop. Medak tried to follow this up with the sci-fi sequel Species II, which did no better, and then retreated back to television for the majority of his remaining career. (To be fair, he’s been associated with a lot of good shows.)
I’m not sure I’d rate Romeo Is Bleeding in the same company as the best thrillers of the thriller-heavy 1990s, but the movie’s more entertaining than its initial failure would suggest. For as unappealing as the characters may be as people, both Oldman and (especially) Olin are magnetic playing them on screen.
The Blu-ray
Romeo Is Bleeding first came to Blu-ray in 2016 as a Twilight Time limited edition of 3,000 units. More recently, a label called Sandpiper Pictures reissued the movie in 2023. Unfortunately, I don’t own that later disc and am unsure whether Sandpiper remastered the film or just recycled the same source Twilight Time used.
Twilight Time was provided a video master from MGM that was already fairly dated by 2016, but remains watchable enough overall. Scanned from a film element somewhere downstream of the camera negative, the picture exhibits occasional dirt and speckles that thankfully aren’t too distracting. Its biggest failing is that the 1.85:1 image has some light edge enhancement that manifests as halo artifacts and very noisy grain in some scenes. That said, I’ve seen a lot worse on other Blu-rays. The artificial sharpening here is disappointing but tolerable. The disc leaves some room for improvement, but I don’t feel an immediate need to replace it with another Blu-ray. Should a 4K version come along at some point, we’ll have to see how I feel about it then.
For a 2.0 surround mix without discrete 5.1, the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack has very pleasing breadth and range. The musical score is especially spread wide across the soundstage, with some satisfying bass from the sound of a strumming cello. With Dolby Surround Upmixer engaged, the surround channels are quite active. On the downside, dialogue is very bright and forward in the mix, which draws attention to a lot of obvious ADR looping.
Extras are barely noteworthy. The only item of any substance is a booklet essay by Twilight Time’s Julie Kirgo. On disc are an isolated score track and a trailer. Also present but unrelated to this specific movie are a promo for whatever anniversary MGM was celebrating at the time, and a still gallery advertising other titles in the Twilight Time catalog.
Related
- Gary Oldman
- Roy Scheider
- Juliette Lewis
- James Cromwell
- Michael Wincott
- Ron Perlman
- Hilary Henkin (screenwriter)
The Video File Blog 
The phrase ‘Romeo is bleeding’ reminds me of Bon Jovi’s ‘Always’. I had never even heard of the movie (yes, I’m ashamed).
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