chaos-rampant This has the basic fulcrum of noir; red-haired devilish femme fatale, the schmuck who is bedeviled by desire for sex and money, looking bamboozled while being smitten by cruelly ironic fate, desire that bends reality and manifests in offbeat ways. I do like that we have it dictating metaphorical spaces of being lured and trapped by that desire.A hole in the ground that he has to keep feeding with money. Watching through binoculars at sex across the street, inflamming the desire. A dream where he's inside a giant ferry wheel and buffed around while she is playing his life at dice down below. The embarrassment of rolling on the floor with her when his colleagues walk through the door. It ends in an aptly noirish way, quoting Detour, where he's been the narrator gone mad as he waits hopelessly in some desert limbo, flicking through the photo-album that chronicles a life wasted when desire entered the pictures and all this (diner, photos) as being trapped in his own mind that relives the past and is conjuring the film itself.Even that is rather intermittent here, not the result of focused vision like the Coens or Almodovar did. Truth be told, I'm simply not too enamored of the obviousness that accompanies many of these modern attempts at film noir. It's like an excessively made up face wearing with some effort a selfconscious grimace as it makes its way through the amoral occasion. For whatever reason I am reminded a lot of Lynne's attempt at Lolita; something that was elusively fluid in its original guise, stultified by too much focus on grooming appearances.Oldman affects his usual twitching self, rather apt in the whole thing. The femme fatale can be overtly sexual in ways she couldn't in Hays code days.Noir Meter: 3/4 | Neo-noir or post noir? Neo

rferentz 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.

Carson Trent But it is Oldman with his lack of inspiration who pushes this collection of random plagiarized film noir clichés into the self dug grave, as he moonwalks thru the entire movie obviously too stoned and drunk to let anything show on his wax like facial expression he carries around here. The script is a mess, as we are being served an already cold meal of voice-over detective story with a limp, ludicrous plot points like the one where Mona waits for Jack to arrive to kill her, just so she can talk him into killing Falcone and set her up with a new identity, him falling for it when he could have easily got out, as it was already clear he had to kill at least one person. They blame it on the voice, but actually it's the dumb alter ego of both director and writer who is at fault. And the casting director, because given some chemistry between Jack and Mona, his moves might have been more understandable. Oldman, terribly miscast here, fails to portray an average Joe, mainly due to his emotional over the top acting style, more fit for a conflicted crack addict, or a flamboyant pimp, but under no circumstances a functional guy in society. The slow witted story teller walks us thru what is supposed to make us witness the down fall of a guy who gets stuck inside his own web of mistakes, but as it turns out, the only part credible enough is the one where he drives himself into a pole losing all his leverage. The whole things rapidly plunges from laughable to dumb and pretentious crapolo, and finally to involuntarily breaking the fifth wall, and making the viewer search for the remote control. Terrible and boring. What a combo.

mrcoolsoul I never usually write on these forums but such a low score for what I consider to be a masterpiece of acting and film-making compelled me to express my opinion.I must admit that I have always preferred films which are narrated (if you note the success of the Shawshank redemption, it is obvious that I am not alone in this) and 'Romeo is Bleeding' is no exception! The acting (in my humble opinion (i never attended film school and didn't take a degree in media studies)) is absolutely fantastic (Gary Oldman can do no wrong) and the storyline is both engrossing and compelling. The film has every element which I crave, both a story to die for and the most powerful characters to ever bring homicidal mania to the screen. The end result is a roller-coaster of a movie portraying the inevitable emotional and spiritual demise of those who sell their soul for temporary material and physical gratification. The most important message I inferred from this movie is, if you are lucky enough to find true love in this life, then treasure it and protect it with your entire being. Once you have it and lose it, the worthlessness of your existence will only be compounded by its loss, and your life will be a metaphorical tumbleweed cast adrift in a desolate desert of despair.F*ckin great movie tho - 10/10