If you come from a dirty city centre like I do (Central Norwich, UK in my case !) you'll love this !

Quite an dark,sinister plot. Gary Oldman has to protect a Russian hit woman as a cop, but kill her as a member of a mob. Naturally the sleazy,erotic style of the film involves him 2-timing his wife, not only with the hit woman but also with Juliette Lewis (a waitress).

Plenty of dirty urban landscapes/structures for all you other city rats! Plenty of scantily dressed girls in sexually uncompromising situations ! Plenty of violence, especially dismemberment! Yes, this is the ultimate dirty,violent + generally nihilistic metropolitan film !

Blood, bullets and black comedy feature strongly in this action-packed slice of Nineties noir that entertains by taking a whole series of typical film noir ingredients and hyping them up to the max. Its story about the downfall of a New York City cop is told in flashback with the man himself providing the hardboiled narration. Despite this, he never becomes a sympathetic character because he's entirely self-centred, driven by greed and lust and habitually betrays everyone who puts any trust in him. Through his own actions, he charts the course of his own journey to hell which suddenly goes into overdrive from the moment that he meets one of the most monstrous femmes fatales imaginable.

NYPD Detective Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman) is a guy with big dreams who envies the lifestyles of the mobsters that he keeps under surveillance in his day-to-day work and supplements his meagre earnings by acting as an informant for local Mob boss Don Falcone (Roy Scheider). After tipping Falcone off about the whereabouts of Nick Gazzara (Dennis Farina), a gangster who, under the witness protection program, had volunteered to give evidence, Gazzara is assassinated by Russian hit-woman Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin) who also kills the Feds who were responsible for guarding the witness.

Mona is soon arrested and Jack is instructed to take her to a safe-house from where she'll be collected by FBI agents. At the safe-house , she uses seduction as a weapon to quickly assert her dominance over the weak-willed cop and he's subsequently found in a very compromising position when the FBI men arrive.

Jack, a serial womaniser who'd been nicknamed "Romeo" by his colleagues, is unfaithful to his supportive wife Natalie (Annabella Sciorra) and takes his good-natured mistress Sheri (Juliette Lewis) for granted despite the fact that she'd do absolutely anything for him. He's also addicted to "feeding the hole" in his back yard where he keeps the considerable amount of cash that he'd been paid by Falcone and thinks that he's doing really well until Falcone suddenly wants him to kill Mona and isn't prepared to take "no" for an answer. The mayhem that follows then becomes very violent, not always credible and full of surprises.

One of the best things about this movie is its tremendous cast which features people of the calibre of Dennis Farina, Juliette Lewis and Annabella Sciorra in supporting roles and Roy Scheider who's exceptionally good as the intimidating Falcone. Gary Oldman is perfect in a part that could almost have been written for him and Lena Olin seems to thoroughly enjoy portraying all the antics of her ruthless, sadistic and completely unhinged femme fatale.

"Romeo Is Bleeding", with its stylish direction, top-class cinematography and atmospheric score is often lurid, sensational and over-the-top but its comic-book style is perfectly suited to the nature of its characters and its fast-moving plot.

Peter Medak's Romeo Is Bleeding is one of the most overlooked crime films of the 90's. It's a downbeat, pitch black, simmering sociopathic neo noir filled to the brim with excellent character actors and actresses inhabiting various delicious cop, gangster and femme fatale roles. It has a lyrical, moody poetry to it it, evoking the noir flicks of the 40's albeit with a decidedly modern, violent and demoralizing bite to it. Gary Oldman, in a monumentally underrated performance, plays Jack Grimaldi, a sleaze bag cop attempting to play the Police force, the Feds and the mob against each other in order to make obscene amounts of dirty money for himself. He's a two timing, amoral asshole of a protagonist, but Oldman plays him in a stray dog, sheepish way that you just can't help root for him, and feel like an outlaw doing so. Of course his scheme falls apart (as all schemes like this do, in movie land) spectacularly so, at the hands of Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin) a tyrannical, deranged Russian contract killer with a penchant for gleeful brutality and unhinged violence. Olin is a wonder in the role, a grinning black velvet spider and a source of constant nightmares for Jack, as well as the audience. The film has a darkly comic, almost fairy tale like quality to it, a sense of inevitable karmic catastrophe at the hands of the mob and the law. Oldman mournfully narrates the proceedings from a hazy desert enclave that may or may not just be a dream, and yearns for a second chance. Medal directs with steely, melodramatic precision. Juliette Lewis does her early 90's ditzy thing to perfection, Annabella Sciorra is sweet as Jack's poor wife, the only sympathetic character in the whole deal, Roy Scheider feels a bit miscast as the vengeful mob boss, but Ron Perlman, Michael Wincott, Will Patton, James Chromwell, David Proval and Dennis Farina are top notch in welcome cameos. I feel like this script alone should have gotten a lot more attention, let alone the simply stunning, beautiful film that it has turned into. Anyone who's a fan of crime films, noir, good story lines, and this troupe of actors (and really, how can you not be, just look at this cast!!) will love this.