Romeo + Juliet (1996)

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has been adapted for the screen more times than most people could count, but Baz Luhrmann's 1996 version remains one of the most discussed and divisive of the lot. Rather than retreating to doublets and candlelight, Luhrmann transplants the feud between the Montagues and Capulets to a fictional, sun-baked American city called Verona Beach, a place of muscle cars, corporate skyscrapers, handguns branded with the families' names, and a religious iconography turned up to an almost hallucinatory pitch. Crucially, and this is what tends to split opinion, Shakespeare's original text is kept entirely intact. Characters fire pistols at one another while speaking in iambic pentameter. It is a bold, occasionally jarring choice, and one that was always going to provoke strong reactions on both sides.

Luhrmann came to the project off the back of Strictly Ballroom (1992), his debut feature, which had already established a visual style best described as polished but unremarkable in its restraint by comparison to what followed. Romeo + Juliet was produced through his own company Bazmark alongside 20th Century Fox, and it announced him internationally as a director with a very particular, maximalist sensibility, for better or worse. The film runs to 120 minutes and carries that energy relentlessly, with Nellee Hooper and a rotating cast of composers and artists contributing a soundtrack that became a considerable commercial phenomenon in its own right. For context on how much the mid-1990s milieu shaped the whole enterprise, it is worth casting your mind back to what else was coming out of that decade, a period that also gave us films like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, another production that made bold, slightly bonkers choices when adapting a well-worn classic for a contemporary audience.

The two leads carry an enormous amount of weight here. Leonardo DiCaprio, who was in the process of moving from promising young talent to full-blown star (you can read thoughts on some of his other work in the reviews of Gangs of New York and The Beach), brings a raw, physical urgency to Romeo that keeps the character from becoming merely decorative within all the visual noise. Claire Danes, then still widely known for the television series My So-Called Life, plays Juliet with a clarity that anchors some of the film's more feverish sequences. The supporting cast includes Brian Dennehy and Vondie Curtis-Hall, along with Jesse Bradford in a smaller role. John Leguizamo, as Tybalt, is a particular presence, bringing a coiled menace that suits both the theatrical register and the gang-warfare setting Luhrmann has constructed around him.

You can tell who's never seen a Shakespeare play with the reviews. I actually really liked this film. Maybe it’s the nostalgia talking (GCSE English, anyone?), but Baz Luhrmann’s modern twist on Shakespeare’s classic works. It’s bold, chaotic and could not be more 90s, swapping swords for guns and Verona for a neon-soaked, sun-drenched fever dream of a city. The acting is fine....for Shakespeare. Some people clearly don’t get that this is theatre on screen, not your typical Hollywood drama. DiCaprio and Danes sell the doomed lovers well enough, and John Leguizamo as Tybalt is fantastic. The exaggerated delivery, the grand emotions, the over-the-top visuals, it’s all part of the Shakespearean experience. Is it perfect? No. The style can get overwhelming, and not every performance lands. But as a gateway into Shakespeare or  as a fresh, daring take on an overdone classic it absolutely delivers.

I keep coming back to that word, gateway, because I think it is exactly right. There is a generation of people for whom this film was the first time Shakespeare felt like something alive rather than a chore on a syllabus, and that is no small thing. Yes, the whole enterprise occasionally buckles under the weight of its own ambition, and there are moments where style swamps everything else entirely. But the core of the tragedy still lands, which is a testament to both the source material and to what Luhrmann, DiCaprio, and Danes manage to pull off beneath all the neon and noise. Sometimes a film does not need to be perfect to earn its place. It just needs to make you feel something, and this one, thirty years on, still does.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1996  | Watched: 2025-04-04

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Romeo + Juliet (1996) on YouTube

Where to watch

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