O’ Romeo Review 2026: If a Boring Animal Featured Shahid Kapoor

O’ Romeo Plot

O’ Romeo is based in 1995 and features Ustara (Shahid Kapoor), a gangster living in Mumbai with his grandmother (Farida Jalal) and his gang members. Earlier, he worked for another gangster, Jalal (Avinash Tiwary), but had a fallout with him. Following that, he works on the payroll of Intelligence Bureau officer Ismail Khan (Nana Patekar), who offers him protection. 

One day, Afshan (Triptii Dimri) visits Ustara at his hideout and asks him to eliminate three people, which Ustara declines. However, after a series of events, Ustara understands her serious ambitions against these three people and agrees to fulfill this risky contract job. Later, he embarks on this mission and also falls in love with Afshan along the way.

O’ Romeo Cast Performances: Another Addition in Disappointments

The most exciting part of O’ Romeo, ever since it has gone into development, is its cast. However, watching the film makes you realize that not everyone in the O’ Romeo cast deserves to be hyped. 

Starting with Shahid Kapoor, he has essayed such roles several times in his career, and that’s why he looks repetitive in his scenes and goes overboard too at several moments. 

Among the others, Triptii Dimri is known to nail whatever role she gets, which explains that she is simply great in O’ Romeo too. Judging by her performances in the past, she deserves to play the lead in a typical Vishal Bhardwaj drama, just not this one. 

Nana Patekar is a man you can depend on to carry such a film with every scene he is in, turning out to be an interesting one, all thanks to his performance. 

Avinash Tiwary tries something new in his career for once, but is let down by the writing to such an extent that every scene he is a part of becomes irritating.

Disha Patani essays a role similar to what she has been known for throughout her career, i.e., a female character who dances well but is not part of the larger game. A similar case is with Tamannaah Bhatia, cast as Avinash’s wife in the film. 

Farida Jalal feels great to watch on the big screen after a long time, and that too in a major Bollywood entertainer. However, she is underutilized. Additionally, Vikrant Massey performs well in his brief cameo, but his character had greater potential that went underutilized; the film could have been a bit better if his character’s love story and bond with Afshan had been better handled in the O’ Romeo duration.

O’ Romeo Falls Flat in Expectations

The O’ Romeo teaser was nothing extraordinary, yet there were some expectations you could carry for the film. However, watching the Shahid Kapoor starrer makes you realize that it has not even tried to come close to those expectations. These expectations had dropped a bit after the O’ Romeo official trailer release, but who could have predicted the pukeworthy experience? 

In typical cases, the first half of the movie is somewhat decent, while the second half is a disaster. In O’ Romeo’s case, the first half of the movie itself is a disaster with no answer as to why the film is even made. In case you do not leave the theater midway, the team will make sure you suffer way more than you expect in the second half. 

The Failure of Vishal Bhardwaj

Vishal Bhardwaj had a good reputation for making raw, hard-hitting drama movies, though he didn’t succeed every time, and still delivered flops, yet carried his own in the eyes of the audience. However, his shift to heavily Animal-like commercial filmmaking with O’ Romeo new film has not only taken away his bit of uniqueness but also put him among the many Indian filmmakers making brutal action movies and failing. While he did want to make an Animal, he ended up making something worse than Baaghi.

While the writing, which includes his contribution too, is at major fault, a factor harmful to the film’s quality is the unintentionally stupid build-ups he gives to the personality of the antagonist Jalal, played by Avinash Tiwary, who kills someone on-screen just because that person dropped water on his wife’s painting. We understand that Vishal Bhardwaj is new to such stuff, and he might have thought that such scenes make the villain a dangerous psycho, but rather the character feels stupid.

Elevation and action sequences like this have been forcefully made to be creative. However, in front of these sequences, when the purpose of the characters assassinating each other is not clearly defined, the graveyard they fill with tons of bodies is a waste of action. 

Poor Job in Book Adaptation

The best work of Vishal Bhardwaj has come from Indian adaptations of popular stories by Shakespeare. However, that’s an area where the director fails as he tries to fictionalize a real-life-based chapter of Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens of Mumbai.

It is a really popular book which you may have last heard of when Sanjay Leela Bhansali had made Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022), based on one of the book’s chapters about the life of Gangubai. The same book, in two different adaptations, reveals an interesting aspect of modern filmmaking: how filmmakers of different sensibilities adapt the stories they are given and hone them for on-screen presentation, with a reception that speaks to either success or disaster.

The Awful and Unconvincing Writing

The makers of the film thought that a huge part of their work was done when they brought such a promising cast on board. However, they never realized (as they will now) that writers need to work as hard as actors to create characters who deserve to be brought to the screen. When writers do not think hard enough to build a story and screenplay as a ladder, the poetic style, the aesthetics, the performances, and all other elements cannot sustain O’ Romeo in cinemas 2026 for long.

A Weak and Cringeworthy Antagonist

The unconvincing writing is also seen in the powerscaling of characters, mainly Ustara and Jalal. This matador, who has been given tons of elevation just to prove he is a powerful, terrifying force, does not turn out to be as strong overall against the protagonist, Shahid Kapoor. Because the hated force in this movie is not a threat to the protagonist but rather someone weak, the elevations, along with the rest of the movie, fail. 

This action movie tries to be a thrilling experience with a lot of twists and turns. While these efforts were needed, we would have appreciated the film more if they had landed. However, all those twists and turns are plain and illogical, and hence only damage your experience further. 

The Lack of Salt in the Story Writing

The only difference between an action film showing such levels of violence and being either great or brainless is the emotions that connect the characters to each other, referred to as the salt that makes or breaks the dish. Here, O’ Romeo ends up being worse than brainless, where the lack of emotions is dried up, and there is no justification behind the actions of each character. Such poor efforts in writing also make the actors look bad even when they are not.

In a film like Animal, director Sandeep Reddy Vanga kept a relatively long runtime to build the movie’s emotions. Meanwhile, in O’ Romeo, the run time of almost 3 hours seems to be fixed just because everyone’s keeping it these days, i.e., without a clear purpose, which makes the film during the O’ Romeo showtimes not good but unnecessarily stretched and tiring.

O’ Romeo Music: Where it’s a Miss and Where a Hit

Vishal Bhardwaj is a music director first and a film director later, which is clear with each and every one of his soundtracks, including O’ Romeo too. 

Whether it be the male and female versions of O Romeo’s title track, Hum To Tere Hi Liye The, Jalwa, or Vaada Hai, they are great songs that can go on your playlist if you are a fan of Vishal Bhardwaj’s musical sensibility. Besides, other songs like Paan Ki Dukaan and Aashiqon Ki Colony are okayish songs made to serve the big screen experience, while Ishq Ka Fever stands as a rare average in this album.

There are plenty of songs in the movie. While the majority of them feel great to listen to, they have been ruined by the abrupt placement in the movie, which overall harms the last remaining bit of entertainment quotient of this gangster action drama.

Our Final Verdict

To be clearly defined, O’ Romeo is a waste of time and another disappointment that has landed in Shahid Kapoor’s filmography. Neither does the film entertain, nor does it stand up to your expectations of a gangster drama, which you have probably seen tons of in recent years. This film cannot be made better by a few tweaks but a mass replacement of brains behind its making. Overall, O’ Romeo is a soulless movie that does not deserve your time. 

Stay tuned to Inside Box Office for future movie reviews and O’ Romeo box office collection updates.