For one of the starkest examples of this, see Romeo is Bleeding<\/em> from 1994. Directed by Hungarian-British filmmaker Peter Medak off an original script from Hilary Henkin, the story follows corrupt police sergeant Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman), who is tasked by the mob to take out a psychotic Russian hit-woman named Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin). Suffused with dark comedy and a heavy dose of surrealism (much of which comes via nonlinear editing), and splattered with profanity and ultra-violence, Romeo <\/em>would read, on paper, like a standard derivative QT entry, were it not for the fact that it\u2019s release predates Pulp Fiction<\/em> by eight months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (And given that it premiered in the UK in \u201893, it seems hardly feasible it would have been overly influenced by Tarantino\u2019s 1992 debut Reservoir Dogs<\/em>, either.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, Romeo is Bleeding<\/em> has much more in common with the titles that make up its filmmaker\u2019s pedigrees, including Medak\u2019s darkly violent satire The Ruling Class<\/em> (1972) and his true-life British gangster saga The Krays<\/em> (1990), as well as\u2014indeed, especially\u2014Henkin\u2019s script for Roadhouse <\/em>(1989). Like that classic, Romeo <\/em>is a wild work of unabashed maximalism, only instead of a double shot of booze, it hits you like a benzedrine rush (with the requisite hazy lulls that come during crash periods). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Medak, along with cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, delivers one artful composition after another (this is the type of picture that everyone took for granted 30 years ago, but which, were it to come out today, would be hailed as a visual masterwork), yet every frame seems to be dripping in grime, flop sweat, semen and, of course, blood. The title, taken from a Tom Waits song, becomes increasingly literalized as our antihero suffers more and more physical damage throughout the course of the story, so that by the last act he looks like a horror-movie version of a hapless Looney Tunes character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That comparison is more apt than you might expect. Oldman\u2019s womanizing addict is a predecessor to the type of toxic anti-hero we\u2019d see pop up in the next decade (particularly via TV with the likes of Tony Soprano and Walter White) , his main vice being greed\u2014he does the mob\u2019s dirty work in order to continually \u201cfeed the hole\u201d (as in, add bundles of cash to an actual hole he\u2019s dug in his backyard). But though he talks about playing both sides against the middle, he\u2019s less Yojimbo and more Elmer Fudd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, every Elmer Fudd needs their Bugs Bunny, and boy, does that describe Olin\u2019s human tornado of carnal destruction, who sows so much madcap chaos by film\u2019s end that you half-expect the set to come crashing down around her. If Oldman\u2014who at this point in his career was known for playing seedy, dangerous types\u2014is at his unhinged best, Olin is outright feral. To say she steals the film is an understatement: she outright takes it and makes it her bitch. It\u2019s a physical performance in every sense of the word\u2014not only does she wield her body as a weapon in the name of seduction, she actually uses it as a weapon at various points. (During the most impressive set piece, which involves a brutal car crash and Olin\u2019s attempts to extricate herself from the wreckage with her hands cuffed behind her back, the actor performed all her own stunts.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great as Oldman and Olin are, this is hardly a two-hander; like pretty much every \u201890s neo-noir, Romeo is Bleeding <\/em>boasts an absolutely stacked cast, featuring Juliet Lewis, Roy Scheider, Dennis Farina, Annabella Sciorra, Michael Wincott, Will Paton, Ron Perlman, James Cromwell, and David Proval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What really distinguishes Romeo is Bleeding<\/em>, beyond the slapstick carnage, is the dreamlike sense of menace that pervades it. In this regard, it seems in line with David Lynch\u2019s style (Mark Isham\u2019s jazzy score, by turns wildly rococo and hauntingly soulful, often recalls Angelo Badalamanti\u2019s work), although like Tarantino, it would be wrong to suggest any overt influence there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There was something in the water supply during the first half of the \u201890s that saw any number of filmmakers crafting these unnerving, uber-nihilistic, psychosexual crime films, many of which were based on the writings of post-war pulp novelists like Jim Thompson<\/a> and Charles WIlleford<\/a>. Though a wholly original script, Romeo is Bleeding<\/em> has so much in common with their deranged sensibilities that you\u2019d be forgiven for assuming it was adapted from one of their forgotten books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally, the meaner, sleazier, and weirder the crime film, the more critics and audiences hate it. For every Pulp Fiction<\/em> or Fargo <\/em>that manages to break through, there are a dozen Romeo is Bleedings<\/em>, generally savaged upon release and then mostly forgotten, save for in the hearts of cult film fanatics and noir completists. In the case of Romeo is Bleeding<\/em>, Oldman\u2019s star performance certainly helped keep it from falling into total obscurity, being that he would go on to be one of the most acclaimed and sought-after stars of the next several decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But now, 30 years after its debut, it deserves to be rediscovered and recognized as the type of everything-including-the-kitchen-sink noir nightmare that has all but disappeared from screens.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Romeo is Bleeding” is streaming on several ad-based services<\/a>, and is also available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thirty years after its ignominious release, we look back at a maximalist neo-noir nightmare that deserved better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":506,"featured_media":21583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1428,1399],"tags":[1429,1422],"class_list":["post-21581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-happy-birthday","category-looking-back","tag-happy-birthday","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22363,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21581\/revisions\/22363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/romeo2-1024x576.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n