As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Blood, bullets and black comedy feature strongly in this action-packed slice of Nineties noir that entertains by taking a whole series of typical film noir ingredients and hyping them up to the max. Its story about the downfall of a New York City cop is told in flashback with the man himself providing the hardboiled narration. Despite this, he never becomes a sympathetic character because he's entirely self-centred, driven by greed and lust and habitually betrays everyone who puts any trust in him. Through his own actions, he charts the course of his own journey to hell which suddenly goes into overdrive from the moment that he meets one of the most monstrous femmes fatales imaginable.NYPD Detective Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman) is a guy with big dreams who envies the lifestyles of the mobsters that he keeps under surveillance in his day-to-day work and supplements his meagre earnings by acting as an informant for local Mob boss Don Falcone (Roy Scheider). After tipping Falcone off about the whereabouts of Nick Gazzara (Dennis Farina), a gangster who, under the witness protection program, had volunteered to give evidence, Gazzara is assassinated by Russian hit-woman Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin) who also kills the Feds who were responsible for guarding the witness.Mona is soon arrested and Jack is instructed to take her to a safe-house from where she'll be collected by FBI agents. At the safe-house , she uses seduction as a weapon to quickly assert her dominance over the weak-willed cop and he's subsequently found in a very compromising position when the FBI men arrive.Jack, a serial womaniser who'd been nicknamed "Romeo" by his colleagues, is unfaithful to his supportive wife Natalie (Annabella Sciorra) and takes his good-natured mistress Sheri (Juliette Lewis) for granted despite the fact that she'd do absolutely anything for him. He's also addicted to "feeding the hole" in his back yard where he keeps the considerable amount of cash that he'd been paid by Falcone and thinks that he's doing really well until Falcone suddenly wants him to kill Mona and isn't prepared to take "no" for an answer. The mayhem that follows then becomes very violent, not always credible and full of surprises.One of the best things about this movie is its tremendous cast which features people of the calibre of Dennis Farina, Juliette Lewis and Annabella Sciorra in supporting roles and Roy Scheider who's exceptionally good as the intimidating Falcone. Gary Oldman is perfect in a part that could almost have been written for him and Lena Olin seems to thoroughly enjoy portraying all the antics of her ruthless, sadistic and completely unhinged femme fatale."Romeo Is Bleeding", with its stylish direction, top-class cinematography and atmospheric score is often lurid, sensational and over-the-top but its comic-book style is perfectly suited to the nature of its characters and its fast-moving plot.

Romeo Is Bleeding (1993) Leonesque New York Neo Noir"What is hell? Hell is when you should have walked, but you didn't. That's hell."Its not very often a film comes from way way out of left field and just blows me away, a film that actually holds interesting scenes knowingly long enough to allow you to drink them in. A film that lovingly caresses the essence of classic Film Noir, updates its violence conventions and very stylishly tells a tall tale that's so dangerously close to being over the top but yet is still believable enough to let it all roll. Romeo Is Bleeding is addictive-ly compelling in the same manner that Sergio Leone re-imagined Westerns are, and you have to scratch your head and wonder what kind of opiate were the critics and the viewing public mainlining on when this accidental masterpiece of a film debuted. This has happened many times before not only in cinema, but even in the long history of the Fine Art world. Films that at first are panned and forgotten that finally through the filter of time get interpreted right.A Neo Noir whose all star cast is excellent but actress Lena Olin steals every scene she is in.The narrated story revolves around the decent of NYPD Sergeant Jack "Romeo" Gramaldi into Noirsville. Jack's voice over narration while a throwback to classic noir is also unique, it's comprised of two voices, sometimes the present one the good Jim (aka repentant Jack), sometimes the bad Jack, and sometimes he listens to one head sometimes he listens to the other one.Jack looked just like anybody but inside he wasn't like anybody, he was going to do something about the dream. Jack supplies tips on the locations of safeguarded witnesses who will testify against the mob headed by Don Falcone. As Jack puts it he puts a quarter in a slot and $65,000 comes out of a PO Box. He takes the cash and feeds the drain hole he dug for it in the back yard of his Maspeth, Queens row house. Everything was going right until they started going wrong. Jack's tip on Gazzara gets both Gazzara and federal agents massacred by "Queen of Queens" rackets mob hit woman Mona Demarkov. Olin is Mona, the pieces lithe, sexy, Russian Femme Fatale and she is a smart, devious, scary-sexy one at that. She flashes her sex like a neon sign at the bottom of a dead end road. Jack looks like a deer caught in her headlights. She probably scared the hell out of a lot of conservative prepubescent boy scouts out there with her animal like sexuality in 1994. That may be the reason the film did poorly upon release, the Zeitgeist was't ready for the likes of Mona. She is feline, deadly, a fusion of Diana and Venus, and when she "presents" herself to Jack, he, and any of us out there that's got a pair of stones are goners. This film is one of the definitive depictions of the Female being deadlier than the Male. Jack is hypnotized between the allure of Mona and the money she baits him with. In the tradition of classic Noirs, its far more powerful a scene with what it doesn't show than say a similar sequence in Basic Instinct.After Demarkov is captured the second time she makes a deal with the feds to turn witness against Don Falcone. Sal asks Jack for her location Jack provides it but the info is wrong and Jack is summoned before Don Falcone who says he will make his wife ugly, burn his house down, and gut his girlfriend, and if he doesn't kill Mona he'll authorize it. On top of all this Jack fancies himself as a ladies man, a straying tomcat Romeo with women problems, both with his long suffering wife Natalie, and with dive waitress Sheri. Jack and Natalie have some poignant scenes together as their life together falls apart. Jack realizes too late that you don't own love, love owns you.Romeo Is Bleeding features a New York City festooned with graffiti, during the era of the World Trade Center. Williamsburg, Bushwick, and the JMZ elevated line in Brooklyn, Maspeth, in Queens, and lower Manhattan are all featured in the film. Sal like a chain smoking bad Bogart, tells Jack outside of Coney Island, that it (New York City) is like the Fall of Rome out there, the streets are filled with animals. Don Falcone acknowledges that he knows the barbarians are outside the gates but tells Jack that that doesn't mean we have to leave the door open.Weaved throughout the film both the sound design and the excellent mood pieces that make up Mark Isham's score fit so well to the scenes and overlaps creating a total atmosphere that I again recall the great collaborations of Leone/Morricone, Hitchcock/Herman and Lynch/Badalamenti. The acting is top notch every aspect of the film works amazingly well. This is a hardcore/hardboiled Neo Film Noir about melancholy and regret. Upon multiple re-watches 10/10

I had to comment because I simply can not believe all of the lower rating numbers this film has received; it's one of my very favorite films of the 1990s.This film is not perfect, as stated by other people, Roy Schieder is terribly miscast (although I was more distracted by his obvious face-lift).Otherwise, this film rocks. The rest of the cast is simply superb and I don't know how in the world Gary Oldman, Juliette Lewis, Annabella Sciorra and Lena Olin were not nominated for the Academy Award in their respective categories. Hilary Henkin has written a tight and compelling script and it's directed with sheer brilliance.Gary Oldmaan is one of the best actors of his generation and nowhere is that comment more obvious than in his performance in this film. As Jack Grimaldi, his New York accent is spot-on. He creates a character which most people will recognize somewhere in his/her life and delivers it with such ease that you live Jack's life through this outstanding actor's performance. Juliette Lewis has never been better. Her performance is funny, touching and ultimately tragic. Annabella Sciorra is glorious as Jack's earth-mother wife. Everything about her performance rings true. But, it's impossible to even find words to describe Lena Olin's Mona Demarkoff. Wow! Beautiful, sexy, tough, cold-hearted, vicious and unrelenting. I'm impossible to ever forget her performance once you've seen it. I haven't seen this film in years, and I'm still upset that she didn't win the Academy Award and wasn't even nominated! When this film failed to get any nominations at all was the time I stopped watching the Oscars.Rent it. You'll never forget it.

This curious pic doesn't know if it wants to keep a straight face or make bizarre faces. It opts for both ways which results in a highly uneven genre bastard that leaves one unsatisfied despite some choice moments such as the sad coda, which works better than it should.Oldman's desperate loser, Olin's over-the-top femme fatale, Scheider's old-school Mafia don... they all are individually convincing, but not when thrown together in a mishmash of soft-boiled philosophical voice-over ramblings, heavy-handed cop flick and film noir genre tropes and, eh, sexually connotated arm amputations.So the pic's quite a mess, particularly in the story department, but it's still worth a look. At least, it's not by the numbers.4 out of 10 tell-tale photo albums