Havan_IronOak Just watched Private Romeo and I gotta say I was disappointed after all the positive comments & reviews. I understood that the story was a modern take on the Romeo & Juliet story set in a boys' military academy. For me it just didn't work. I tried to get behind the "gender blind" casting, a variation on "color blind" casting in which the audience pretends NOT to notice a the actors race and just goes with the character as written. For me this didn't work because the characters adhered so loosely to the characters as written. The story is all about how two factions are brought to grief when a member of each faction kills themselves after becoming a couple. In this version, I couldn't tell the factions apart or even if there really were any. There were no parental arranged marriages, no killing of cousins in duels, and even bigger departures from the story... but that would be telling!I'm a big fan of restaging Shakespeare in other scenarios. West Side Story and Ran are great examples where "bending the Bard" actually added new and interesting aspects to an already classic tale, but this one added nothing and detracted a LOT. I saw all of my favorite speeches of the play marred and made less by this staging. Also the production values were glaringly deficient in spots. Why stage a military drill scene without bothering to ensure uniform uniforms, and with so small a number of "cadets?"This felt much less organic throughout than that Woody Allen movie where he took an already released Japanese movie and substituted his own dialogue. The boys were pretty and there were moments where the actors managed to get my interest & empathy DESPITE the total lack of any help from the vehicle they were performing in. It may well be me. There are a number of very positive reviews of this film by critics from The NY Times and The Village Voice et. al. but after seeing this I'm if some form of payola wasn't involved...

djd5821 Private Romeo is a wonderful experiment and another entry in the extensive library of films highlighting the timeless genius of William Shakespeare. It proves that Romeo and Juliet can be translated into almost any setting. As a movie, it is somewhat lacking. Shakespeare's play combines a perfect mix of romance, comedy and tragedy. Unfortunately, the movie only gets one of them right.The romance between Glenn Mangan (aka Juliet) and Sam Singleton (aka Romeo) is honest and believable. The actors deliver their lines as well or better than many other Shakespearean actors.But, with one exception, whatever comedy there is seems completely unintentional. The film is set in an all-boys military academy, so the lines normally spoken by female characters are instead spoken by men. Every time a person said "Juliet" or "Nurse" or "her" I was taken out of the movie and left to ponder the "experiment". Men referring to other men as females became funny after a while. Chris Bresky, who plays Omar Madsen (aka the Nurse), through no fault of his own, was often the source of this unintentional comedy. But he also has the one genuinely funny scene when he returns to Juliet to deliver Romeo's answer to Juliet's question regarding marriage. It is also one of my favorite scenes in Shakespeare's play and Bresky does it beautifully.But the movie really goes off the rails as a tragedy. In Shakespeare's original, tension is established by two warring families who will only declare peace when they each lose a child. None of this happens in the movie. Only eight students are left behind at the academy, and two of them, Ken Lee (aka the Prince) and Adam Hersh (aka Friar Laurence), are not part of either "family". It's hard to understand the tension among the other six students. Romeo and Juliet are both gay, and when they "come out" during the party, no one seems to be particularly homophobic. Carlos Moreno (aka Tybalt) is upset, but it's unclear why. Is it because they're gay? From different social classes? From different battalions? The battle between the two sides is never clearly defined and we are left to wonder what the problem is.Romeo and Juliet is a play about coincidences. Romeo goes to the party after being shown the guest list and seeing Rosaline's name. He stumbles over the wall just in time to see Juliet emerge on the balcony. He happens upon Mercutio and Tybalt in the midst of a heated argument. Friar Laurence's letter to Romeo in Mantua gets delayed. Romeo drinks the poison only moments before Juliet awakens. And the Friar arrives at the tomb too late to save Romeo and leaves too early to save Juliet. Each of these coincidences leads inexorably to the play's tragic conclusion.But no one dies in the movie, so the coincidences, such as they are, are meaningless. Since there is no tension between two warring tribes, the "deaths" of the two protagonists are meaningless. And what did their "deaths" accomplish? Upon awakening, Romeo and Juliet are in the exact same situation they were when they "died". Nothing gets resolved and no one is changed.The movie is a fine experiment, but I can't recommend it.On a final note, the acting is superb with kudos to everyone. Hale Appleman (aka Mercutio) is outstanding, and I hope to see him in other movies in the future.

kuronootokoab At first when I watched the movie, I couldn't get through it all knowing that the two were going to die (everyone past freshmen year of high school should know this). The next day I decided to finish it anyway and I'm glad that I did. First let me say that the acting was phenomenal. In high school and after watching the newer movie with Leonardo DeCaprio many many times I still didn't truly understand the story of Romeo and Juliet, probably because of how our language now and the language then were so different and it was hard to muddle through. But displayed from a gay point of view I suddenly found myself relating to their story and understanding via body language. Many parts confused me but that was probably the difficulty of mixing Elizabethan with modern speech and making the original story relatable to an all male military high school. And there were a few parts that angered me, but it was a brilliant choice to alter the traditional Capulet vs Montague feud to tailor it toward homophobia, someone most every gay man or woman can relate to.SPOILERS!!!I also appreciated how little of violence there was. Mercutio and Tybalt didn't actually die, instead they got into a fist fight that Romeo broke up, injuring Tybalt.The ending came with mixed feelings for myself, a little confusion but mostly a sense of satisfaction the original story could never offer. The fact that no one dies at all gave the story less of a tragic feel, though that was a major part of the original story it still sat well for me, though others may disagree.From what I gathered, Romeo drinks the remaining concoction that the friar made to fake "Juliet's" death thinking it was poison (though that may not be the case as he states that the crimson and rose has not left "her" lips) and then cuddles up to "her". The friar appears and wakes "Juliet", urging "her" to flee before the watchmen come, but instead "she" stays, kissing Romeo once more and awakening him. After one more kiss the scene fades to static shots of the school and then shows "Juliet" sing "You made me love you" to the camera as the credits then begin to role.This ending left me feeling both good and bad. I think they could have done without the song at the end and maybe extended on the fact that both boys survived and probably had to face some pretty serious consequences as Romeo had injured Tybalt and he and "Juliet" had a gay love affair in a military school.All in all I highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys the classic tale (and any straight guy who can handle two guys passionately kissing lol)

walypala I have a couple of pet hates when it comes to Shakespeare: 1. Forced constructs (a lá Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It set in feudal Japan - WTF!?!) 2. Americans (I know it is harsh but I have yet to see an American production that I've not cringed at - Did you see Ethan Hawke in Hamlet?) And then along comes Private Romeo to force a group of American military cadets into Romeo and Juliet.Shakespeare, forced context, Americans.Shakespeare, forced military academy context, hot semi-naked Americans.So I went. I was unprepared. The performances here completely disarmed me. The cast, led by (Seth Numrich - incidentally, Julliard's youngest ever drama student) is phenomenal. Their command of Shakespeare's words is masterful, finding the perfect balance between the flow of natural dialogue and the meter of the verse.Hale Appleman is especially good as Mercutio, and he relishes the early scenes, absolutely smashing the Queen Mab speech. Chris Bresky, too, who takes on the nurse's role has a lot of fun with his role, aided by some clever set up. But, in truth, it is hard to fault anyone in the cast.And the context? That's a bit more tricky.The film kicks off with the students doing a read through of Romeo and Juliet in their class. Thankfully, Brown moves away from the standard 'lives mirror performance' format, as the cadets start to slip into verse with little warning. The military academy works as a setting because the action that is taking place isn't strictly 'Romeo and Juliet'. Shakespeare's dialogue is used to accentuate the action rather than drive it. It soon becomes clear that the masked ball is not going to be a masked ball and that daughters are not going to be girls. Importantly, there are no rival houses, they are mentioned but they are not the cause of the tragedy here, that role is taken up by the undercurrent of homophobia and standard high school pack mentality.If you accept this construct then the world of Private Romeo maintains a concrete internal logic. The cadets can change roles because the speech is more important than the character. Director Alan Brown cleverly signals character changes by flashing back to the classroom scene, re-introducing the boys in the new role.Coming to the film with a solid grasp of the play will certainly benefit. Brown has pared the play back to an extremely fast moving 98 minutes and he has used many techniques to keep the pace moving. Characters are excised or collapsed into single characters, actors double up on roles, and whole plot lines are removed or altered. This is nothing new in producing Shakespeare but it is certainly less common producing his works for the screen.SPOILERS I won't deny that Brown has taken some liberties with the play. The tweaks that Baz Lurhmann made in his excellent 1996 version have been taken a step further here, with both the boys surviving. I didn't find this as jarring as I would have expected. Following on from Tybalt and Mercutio's fight (where neither die) the altered ending maintains the relationship between the traditional play and the play on the screen. Brown's decision also sidestepped the propensity of gays to die at the end of films, a comment in itself.END SSPOILERS There are of course choices that didn't work especially well; a series of lip-synced YouTube videos filmed by the cadets were effective but oddly placed and a song by 'Juliet' over the films credits needs to be hacked off the end (and will be once it reaches my DVD-r).Private Romeo is a fluid, astonishingly acted and relevant addition to the library of 'Romeo and Juliet' on film. Brown's film can sit proudly next to Zeffirelli and Lurhmann as an adaptation that has captured the true beauty of the text and adolescent love.Do not miss!