![]() ![]() Could this duck-lipped, baby-faced Tony really have been just one punch away from murder? Odd, too, that Elgort, a hoofer who literally danced his way through the opening credits of Baby Driver, seems somewhat flat-footed when compared to his springy Jet counterparts. It’s a shortcoming laid bare when he duets with Zegler, the agility of her voice putting his to shame. Elgort, a hoofer who literally danced his way through the opening of Baby Driver, seems somewhat flat-footedĪs for the set-piece songs, Elgort struggles to breathe much life into Maria, his voice tinged with a touch of the Tony Hadleys whenever he gets into his upper register. ![]() Yet while Jon M Chu’s recent screen adaptation of In the Heights gave us wall-walking scenes that adventurously turned the world on its side, Spielberg and Kaminski lean into the simpler, low-angle, 45-degree tilts that have become common parlance in New York gang movies. Early scenes of the Jets staking out their turf call to mind the ragged street urchins from Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, another stage musical hit that became a 60s screen staple. Shot in handsome widescreen vistas by Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s West Side Story starts with a strangely subdued palette that bursts into vibrant colour during skirt-swirling dancehall showdowns. With a once-and-for-all rumble on the cards, into which gang leader Riff (the sinewy Mike Faist) seems determined to drag his old friend, the scene is set for cross-cultural tragedy of love and death. When Tony falls for Maria at a dance designed to bring harmony between warring clans (a “social experiment”), he incurs the wrath of friends and foes alike. This is the stamping ground of the Jets, the white gang fighting a turf war with their sworn Puerto Rican enemies, the Sharks.Īnsel Elgort is Tony, a one-time troublemaker now attempting to put his past behind him. Suffice to say that Spielberg’s version opens with what could be an outtake from the later stages of Saving Private Ryan – an aerial view of what looks like a bomb site, over which a wrecking ball ominously hangs. The story, which transposes the star-crossed lovers of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet from Renaissance-era Verona to postwar New York, hardly needs rehearsing. Hooray, then, for screen newcomer Rachel Zegler, who landed the lead role of Maria from an open casting call, and whose vibrantly natural performance almost singlehandedly justifies this “reimagining” from director Steven Spielberg. Yet even the most ardent fan of the original would have to admit that time has not been kind to the sight of Natalie Wood playing a Latina. D o we really need a remake of West Side Story? Having won 10 Oscars (a record for a musical), including best picture, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’s 1961 screen incarnation of the 1957 Broadway musical hit remains a much-loved and much-watched “classic” a self-consciously streetwise affair with weapons-grade earworm tunes and choreography that kids would try to mimic in school playgrounds for decades. ![]()
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