leonardo decaprio ( what’s eating gilbert grape ) and claire danes ( tv’s my so called life ) star in director baz luhrmann’s modernized version of william shakespeare’s classic , romeo & juliet .
surrounded by a superb supporting cast , in-cluding paul sorvino ( goodfellas ) , brian dennehy ( tommy boy ) , pete poslethwaite ( the usual sus-pects ) and john leguizamo ( executive decision ) , decaprio and danes shine throughout the film .
the story starts off at a gas station , where the ” montague boys ” meet the ” capulet boys ” and square off with one another .
symbolizing the swords of shakespeare’s day were their weapons , like the ” rapier-9mm ” or the ” longsword- shotgun . ”
instead of killing each other right away , they shoot around , just like in sword fights of old .
another great thing about the film was the performance of harold perrineau as romeo’s best friend .
mercutio , who in shakespeare’s novel was quite a stud , was portrayed as an afri-can-american cross-dresser whose violent na-ture , was a definite plus .
miriam margoyles , a virtually unknown actress was astounding as juliet’s nurse , even though she was never given a name .
she was the only one who could keep juliet out of her fantasy world .
verona was the home of the rival families in shakespeare’s version , only slightly changed in luhrmann’s .
now known as verona beach , the capulet’s ( led by sorvino ) and montague’s ( led by dennehy ) are now rival corporate dynasties .
and their small family skirmishes were now huge gang wars .
one slight problem with the film was the difficulty to comprehend the dialogue , since it was spoken in old english .
sub-titles could have helped in the beginning of the movie , but toward the end , it became easier to understand .
this excellent movie poses another prob-lem : what genre is it ?
romeo & juliet contains so much drama , yet enough comedy and action to be placed in either of those categories .
with the same award-winning formula that was used by quentin tarantino in reservoir dogs and pulp fiction , romeo & juliet is a sure fire modern masterpiece .
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