Good thing Shakespeare's name is included in the title. Otherwise, you might mistake this audacious version of his tale of star-crossed teen lovers for an extended music video. Loud, garish, violent and determinedly in-your-face, it more accurately should be billed Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet. Director Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom) plunks down the Bard's tragic romance in a modern urban hellhole he dubs Verona Beach (the film was shot in Mexico City and Veracruz), depicts the Montagues and Capulets as warring gangs (complete with tattoos, souped-up cars and drive-by shootings), piles on religious iconography (a Madonna even graces a pistol handle) and bathes the whole in pointless water imagery (Romeo and Juliet first glimpse each other through a fish tank and later make out in a swimming pool). And, oh yes, Mercutio is a singing drag queen.
What's missing amid all this frantic activity and eye candy is the poetry. Only in the big romantic scenes between Romeo (DiCaprio, whose alienated, lost-lamb approach works) and Juliet (Danes, so spunkily googly-eyed that you want to smack her) does the booming soundtrack pipe down enough so you can hear Shakespeare's swell speeches. While there's nothing wrong with updating and adapting a classic, one hopes this rocket-fueled R&J won't be the only version its young audience ever sees. That would be a real tragedy. (PG-13)
Vivica A. Fox, Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Blair Underwood
Intellectually bankrupt and not much richer when it comes to principles, this bank-robbery caper is a throwback to the black-vengeance films of the 70s. The catch is that this time the black Americans seeking revenge for various wrongs are four gun-crazy females. Director F. Gary Gray and writers Takashi Bufford and Kate Lanier strive frantically to rationalize the quartet's murderous rampage, but without much success. Of the women, only Fox (see story, page 113) has a real ax to grind against "the system"—she has been unjustly fired from her job as a bank teller. Of the others, Latifah has the weakest case. Her main complaint seems to be that as a lesbian who wants to hang out with her girlfriend, she is an object of derision. Pinkett, meanwhile, has an unlikely romance with Underwood, who picks her up while she cases the bank where he is an officer. Even Underwood's considerable skills can't make his naive character plausible. (R)
Bill Murray, Matthew McConaughey
This family-oriented comedy waddles along happily, much like its star—no, not Murray, but an elephant named Tai. She plays the unexpected inheritance left to Murray by his father, a circus clown who drops dead while touring in Maryland. To get Tai off his hands, Murray has to get her to L.A., where he will deliver her either to a flashy trainer (Linda Fiorentino) or a decent but drab zookeeper (Janeane Garofalo). So it's a road movie—episodic, silly, very enjoyable. Murray, slouching toward L.A., can navigate this kind of vehicle in his sleep. Not so McConaughey, as a weird, splenetic trucker who gives Murray a lift. McConaughey shrieks his lines as high-pitched gibberish. Why was he encouraged to do this? He couldn't do worse damage if he were a mad elephant in a hospital ward. (PG)
>Michael Cimino
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL
In the annals of Hollywood fiascos, few have been as spectacular as director Michael Cimino's. Just two years after winning Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for The Deer Hunter in 1979, Cimino tanked with his third film, Heaven's Gate, a 3½-hour western epic that film critic Pauline Kael labeled "a numbing shambles." The movie's failure prompted the sale of United Artists and has overshadowed the director's career to this day. In the 15 years since, he has written screenplays and directed sporadically. Now 56, Cimino, who is single and divides his time between homes in Los Angeles and Long Island, N.Y., is trying again with Sunchaser, a psychological thriller starring Woody Harrelson.
How did the Heaven's Gate debacle affect your life?
It was really a great trauma, as everyone knows. Since then I've been unable to make any movie that I've wanted to make. I've been making the best of what is available.
How do you cope?
I've thought often of John Ford. He would keep in shape by taking endless studio assignments so that when The Quiet Man, the film he most dearly wanted to do, finally came along, he was ready to make the most of it.
Why did you pick Woody Harrelson to play the wealthy doctor in Sunchaser?
For one thing, Woody's studied chemistry. Unlike a lot of people, he can actually pronounce deoxyribonucleic acid. And he has absolute physical courage. We were on a mountain top at 14,000 feet, and I found him doing a handstand on a narrow ledge. I said, "Wood! You could've gotten killed." He just smiled and said, "It's not my time, man."
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