From the film’s opening image of a television news anchor delivering Shakespeare’s famous prologue, it is clear that this is not your father’s Verona. It is, in fact, Verona Beach, a seedy modern metropolis where the rival corporate families Montague and Capulet vie for dominance, often in bloody shootouts with Sword-brand handguns. Luhrmann has carefully constructed a  contemporary world where much of Shakespeare’s original dialogue can be retained, but Romeo + Juliet is no mere exercise in cleverness. The director’s kinetic camerawork and frantic pacing are, as in his later Moulin Rouge, complemented by a treatment of his characters’ passions that is at once both highly personal and operatic.