Shakespeare Tarrantino style?

TO see or not to see that is the question ... take a helping of Pulp Fiction and mix it with Shakespeare's greatest tragedy and you have a Romeo and Juliet with 90s spice!

The film is set in modern-day Verona Beach, Miami. The Montagues are tattooed, loud-mouths wearing Hawaiian shirts. The Capulets are snarling, swarthy pimps in pinstripes and jewellery.

Mercutio is a black drag queen dishing out Ecstasy pills.

Armed and dangerous, as the gang spouts Shakespeare's words, the mix seems somewhat awkward with the booming soundrack of Radiohead and the Butthole Surfers.

But any doubts you might have that director Baz Luhrmann, of Strictly Ballroom fame, has got it seriously wrong, disappear with the appearance of the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.

Leonardo DiCaprio - a fresh-faced James Dean type and Claire Danes - a stunning 90s babe - are perfectly cast as Romeo and Juliet.

When they meet at the Capulets' masked ball, Juliet looks magical as a winged angel.

The erotic scenes develop, by the balcony with Juliet cooing: "My only love sprung from my only hate." Their clinches move to the swimming pool and later they tenderly consumate their love between the sheets

Their last moving scene is on an altar surrounded by candles and saw the audience deathly hushed, barely breathing.

Pete Posthelwaite as Father Lawrence has the task of having to explain to the lovers the implications of their union while Miriam Margolyes adds humour as Juliet's nurse.

7/10 - Parting is such sweet sorrow ... it's hard to drag yourself away, but then this has to be the greatest love story ever told.

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