Review: West Side Story

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" remake is a good cover of a classic. It makes some stylistic choices that weren't available to the 1961 Robert Wise film and includes some story rearrangement - the kindly Doc in the original is replaced by Rita Moreno's Valentina, who acts as a mentor and employer of Tony (Ansel Elgort) - that often works well enough.

Spielberg has tackled so many genres - from horror ("Jaws") and science fiction ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind") to adventure films ("Raiders of the Lost Ark"), war movies ("Saving Private Ryan") and serious-minded historical epics ("Schindler's List" and "Munich") - that it comes less of a surprise that he's trying his hand at a musical than that he's only getting around to it now.

And there's no question about it: He's got a knack for it. The new "West Side Story" is a triumph of camera placement, staging and movement. The film looks great, and the dance numbers have a vitality to them that's often missing in modern movie musicals. The iconic opening number, "Jet Song" (you probably know it from the lyrics "when you're a Jet" and the snapping fingers) displays a real sense of menace and is performed, much like many of the film's musical numbers, almost to perfection.

The film, for those unfamiliar with "West Side Story," is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," so an outline of the plot is unlikely necessary, although some changes have been made from the original "West Side Story" - such as the Moreno character, the movement of one of the film's iconic tunes toward the end of the picture and more attention paid to the theme of prejudice (the white Jets wanting the Puerto Rican Sharks to move off their territory, which they see as threatened by the increase of nonwhites moving into their neighborhood).

Elgort is fine as Tony, while Rachel Zegler is very good as Maria. But one of the small issues with the couple's love story - Maria's overprotective brother and Sharks leader Bernardo (David Alvarez) doesn't want her mixed up with the white Tony, a former leader of the Jets - is that the central two characters are often overshadowed by the supporting ones.

The two characters in the film who easily steal the show are Anita (Ariana DeBose), Bernardo's girlfriend, and Riff (Mike Faist), the de facto leader of the Jets since Tony is staying out of the public eye after having nearly beaten a rival gang member to death some time before the story starts. DeBose's performance during the show stopping "America" is breathtaking as she and a crew of seemingly hundreds sing and dance in the streets of New York in a moment that rivals some of the best in "In the Heights," which was also set amid a Latino community in New York City and made use of that city's streets for dance numbers.

Faist exudes both charm and menace as the Jets leader, especially during the opening number as he and his fellow gang members prowl their territory. Moreno (who won an Oscar for playing Anita in the original film), at age 89, is also good as Valentina, who was once married to a white man and understands Tony's predicament, but is also afraid about him getting mixed up in a violent situation - Bernardo is a fighter who is gunning for Tony after the latter danced with his sister at a community mixer. Speaking of which, the scene in which Tony and Maria eye each other across the gymnasium during that mixer is one of the key scenes in the film that exhibit what one might call that "Spielberg magic."

So, while "West Side Story" is, obviously, a little short on originality due to the fact that it's a remake of an old film and musical that was itself an adaptation of one of the stage's most iconic plays, it makes up for it in execution. Despite being familiar with the story, the dance numbers and singing are strong, there are more than a few gripping moments and the camerawork is often intoxicating. And it's further proof that Spielberg can work in pretty much any genre and make it his own.