O'Romeo

"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...is left swinging between highs and lows. 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."

"Vishal Bhardwaj has repeatedly proven his grip on the Indian noir genre with Maqbool, Omkara, Haider"

"What ultimately works for O Romeo is the film's refusal to play safe. It succeeds because it treats all the lead characters, including the antagonist Avinash Tiwari, in a very calculated script that builds enough tension. If you expect Haider or Kaminey level Cinema, you might be disappointed, but put away that burden, and this is absolutely good Cinema!"

"O'Romeo is a gangster drama and also a love story with credible performances all around. Yet, for all its performances and musical highs, O'Romeo is perhaps Bhardwaj's most self-indulgent work. In an era where filmmakers often sand down edges to appease markets and algorithms, he chooses operatic ambition over caution."

"O'Romeo employs and mixes genre principles in ways that elevate even a standard vengeance saga to a level that is well above the ordinary."

"It's an ordinary plot about a man's obsession, but Vishal Bhardwaj lays it out like a lavish spread, with stylish and very violent action set pieces, effectively used music, and a romance that has moments that are tender as well as bitter. If there is poetry in the emotions, unfortunately, there is also gratuitous violence, that actually takes away from the enjoyment of the action scenes."

"Shahid-Vishal's fourth collab, fully bloated, isn't quite Kaminey; but, in parts, cult enough! For the most part, O'Romeo feels like two separate films."

"When an emotional, high-voltage scene on screen makes you titter instead of tearing up, you know something is not right. Somewhere between the filmmaker's intent and the audience's reception, the emotion gets lost in translation. That is the central tragedy of Vishal Bhardwaj's most massy film yet, O'Romeo."

"In O' Romeo, Vishal Bhardwaj crafts a visually stunning gangster-romance led by Shahid Kapoor. However, despite poetic frames and intense performances, the film struggles with an uneven screenplay and an underwhelming emotional pay-off."

"'O'Romeo'—starring Shahid Kapoor & Triptii Dimri in the lead—is an absolute must-watch."

"O'Romeo is an ordinary plot about a man's obsession, but Vishal Bhardwaj lays it out like a lavish spread, with stylish and very violent action set pieces, effectively used music, and a romance that has moments that are tender as well as bitter."