Word: mona
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...mistress (Juliette Lewis) and a profitable sideline in helping the Mafia locate apostates who think they've found safety in the witness- protection program. But the Mafia don (a wildly miscast Roy Scheider) has given Jack a sort of promotion: he's entrusted with actually putting the hit on Mona, who, naturally, deploys all her sexual cunning to evade her fate...
This brings us to the movie's real business, which is to get Jack and Mona wrestling around together. Some blood is spilled on these occasions, so a sex- and-violence equivalency is established. There is also a bondage subtext that climaxes with Jack handcuffed to a bed and Mona in dominatrix black leather. Possibly writer Hilary Henkin sees Mona as a woman empowered by a brutal feminism. Possibly director Peter Medak, who specializes in Eurotrash artiness, sees the film as an upscale gloss on the gangster genre. Everyone else will observe that in structure and intent it is soft...
...film's first half we watch Jack volley between his inexplicably loyal wife Natalie (Annabella Sciorra) and his submissive moll Sheri (Juliette Lewis), all the while wrestling with his conscience. Because the formula would not be complete without a furtive villain force, Medak is compelled to introduce Russian mobster Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin) into Jack's dysfunctional life. Fueled by lust and fear, Jack is either chasing or being chased by this femme fatale from hell...
What plagues the film most is its unbalanced treatment of character development. The eponymous Romeo is overdeveloped, while Mona and the other female roles are paper-thin. Jack is basically a greedy bastard primarily concerned with satiating his appetites. Through incessant and insufferably cliched voice-over introspection, however, Medak insists that Jack is a man of true depth. He is not, and he does not deserve all the attention paid...
...Mona, however, is another story. As a larger than life she-devil, Olin plays her with wonderfully demonic wickedness. She brandishes a deranged laugh as well as she does a pistol. Unfortunately, Medak gives us no insight (aside form an out-of-left-field tale of her losing her virginity) into why she is indeed so bad. She is instead figure with pseudo-super powers and an inexplicable penchant for evil. That Olin must parade around in stiletto heels and garters only erodes her character's credibility even further...