When Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, a hyper-stylized and modern take on William Shakespeare’s tragic play about star-crossed lovers and forbidden love, came out, I was obsessed with it. Before I even saw the movie, the classic poster featuring Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo Montague and Claire Danes’ Juliet Capulet surrounded by their rival families was something I’d always look at while strolling through Blockbuster or Suncoast.
I recently went back and watched this great ‘90s movie for the first time in years with my Hulu subscription, and it was just as wild as I remembered. While the entire Romeo + Juliet cast was a wonderful, nearly 30 years later, there’s one performance that blew me away in 1996 that is still just as extraordinary and dynamic in 2025. In case you were wondering, it’s neither of the two leads…
Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, And John Leguizamo Are Great In Their Respective Roles
James Cameron’s 1997 epic, Titanic. His take on a young and hopelessly romantic Montague heir as he stumbles around a near-dystopian-looking Verona was absolutely magical.
John Leguizamo as Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin and a man with some of the best footwear I’ve ever seen in a movie. His introduction in that insane and explosive moment of civil unrest in the opening minutes, where he stomps out a match with those metal-plated heels, is just too damn cool. But he’s still not the best or most iconic character from the movie.
one of the best parties in cinematic history, giving us one of the greatest soliloquies of all time, or becoming the envy of everyone with his killer drag performance, this guy does it all. But it’s not just fun and games, as Mercutio standing up for Romeo and getting killed by Tybalt provides for one of the most emotional and powerful scenes of the entire movie.
Baz Luhrmann’s best movie, and a lot of that has to do with Harold Perrineau’s portrayal of Mercutio. Yeah, the inclusion of two Radiohead songs is awesome, and the other acting performances are to die for, but it’s Mercutio that does it for me. I honestly don’t know if anyone could have pulled off this version of the character so well; there’s just no way.
I would love to know what that first meeting was like between the director and actor, where they figured out how Mercutio was going to be portrayed and how they were going to differentiate the performance from other takes on the classic character over the years. Let me tell you, this is nothing like the more traditional versions of the character, and it works within the realm of Luhrmann’s directorial style.
most of the show’s episodes? None other than Harold Perrineau’s Augustus Hill (and the show’s fourth-wall-breaking narrator).
I just can’t get over the fact that Perrineau went from giving audiences a unique spin on Mercutio in a bonkers William Shakespeare adaptation to playing one of TV’s most unforgettable characters in the span of a few months. Yeah, there was a lot that was unrealistic about Oz when it came to the situations and Perrineau’s character, but the actor, along with the rest of the cast, helped create a show that was one thing on the surface but so much more the deeper you dove. Plus, those openings are still great after all these years.
The moral of the story is that it’s never a bad idea to go back and watch one of your favorite movies, even if the experience reaffirms something you thought many years ago.