christian movie reviews west side story

West Side Story (Christian Movie Review)

Final Verdict:  A fresh version of a classic story. Dancing, romance, catchy tunes, and tragedy, this film has it all. Spielberg proves himself again.

About The Film

I’m not a fan of musicals.

I don’t dislike all musicals, but the genre doesn’t typically excite me. I feel the same way about horror movies. I’ll go see a good one, but I’ll see it because it’s a good movie, not because of its genre. So, when I hear Steven Spielberg is making a new adaptation of West Side Story , I am interested because Spielberg is the greatest director of all time. I expect him to make a good film, even though I don’t love musicals, and he has never directed a musical before. All that being said, I am happy to report that I like this musical.

West Side Story (2021) is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name that was loosely based on Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet . It was previously adapted for the screen in 1961. The 1961 version is considered a classic by many, and won ten Oscars in its day, including Best Picture. Today’s version takes place in the West Side slums of New York City circa 1957. A Puerto Rican gang (the Sharks) and a white gang (the Jets) fight over control of their condemned land. Meanwhile, a former Jet named Tony falls in love with a Puerto Rican girl named Maria. What further complicates this interracial relationship is that Maria’s brother Bernardo is the leader of the Sharks. Tensions rise, and rumbles go down in this story that takes place in just a 48-hour period. This film has dancing and joy, but in the end, you won’t forget that at its roots it is still a Shakespearian tragedy.

All the performers shine here. Rachel Zegler is a revelation as Maria. Ansel Elgort delivers as a leading man Tony. The supporting characters of Anita, Bernardo, and Riff all jump off the screen. The music feels timeless. The cinematography and costume design bring great artistry. If I was to pick out one flaw, I’d say it feels a bit long at 2h36m. All in all, this film is another masterpiece painted by a master artist.

For Consideration

Profanity: A few mild profanities (S—, B—d, D—k, etc). A couple F-word stand-ins but no actual F-word. A few religious profanities (g—d—). Some racial/ethnic slurs.       

Sexuality: Some kissing. Sex is implied once. One female character dresses like a boy because she wants to be a part of the gang (she also insists once that she is “not a girl”).

Violence: Some bloody fistfights. Knives and a gun are also used but aren’t very bloody. We see a nail stuck in someone’s ear lobe. A woman is harassed by a group of men and a threat of rape is implied but they are interrupted.

Engage the Film

An eye for an eye.

The most interesting theme to look at in this story is the violent tendencies of its young men. The best example of this is in one of its songs Gee, Officer Krupke :

“Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,

Ya gotta understand:

It’s just our bringin’ upke

That gets us outta hand.

Our mothers all are junkies,

Our fathers all are drunks.”

And later in song, the boys, imitating a judge, sing:

“Officer Krupke, you’re really a square.

This boy don’t need a judge, he needs a analyst’s care!

It’s just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.

He’s psychologically disturbed!”

These opening lines begin to answer the complicated reasons behind why these boys are the way they are. Is it their parents’ fault? Is it society’s fault? Police? Are they bad to the core, or are they just sick? Even though there are no monocausal explanations for their actions, we can see that they are at least, in part, products of their environment. Boys with little hope or purpose decide to make their own purpose. The Jets become an identity. A family for the abandoned. They rally around their race so as to make the Puerto Ricans an enemy invader to their neighborhood.

Bernardo might not have the same issues that Riff and the Jets seem to have, but he still loves violence. He’s a proud boxer, and definite hot head. He hates the idea of a “gringo” marrying his sister. Riff, Bernardo, and their respective gangs are on a collision course. But Tony wants no part of it. He’s trying to move on. He’s found something better than violence—true love with Maria. Tony has a new purpose that Riff can’t understand. Bernardo won’t accept that Tony is different than the Jets. As much as Tony tries to get out of this fight, he can’t.

Fighting gives people a feeling of purpose. It takes us out of the mundane of modern life. We sometimes return to our tribal nature because we want something to fight for. But Christ gives us another way, and another purpose. Our hearts ought not “devise violence” (Prov 24:2). Our fight is not with “flesh and blood” (Eph 6:12). Christ calls you to put “away your sword” (Matt 26:52). I think West Side Story is a good example of what a lack of compassion and love for neighbor can lead to.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Matthew 5:9

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West Side Story

Reviewed by: Alexander Malsan CONTRIBUTOR

Rival, violent criminal street gangs in 1950s New York

Gang initiations

What is true love and how do you know when you have found it?

RACISM —What are the consequences of racial prejudice and false beliefs about the origin of different ethnicities? Answer

ORIGIN OF ETHNIC PEOPLE GROUPS—How could all ethnicities come from Noah, his three sons and their wives? Answer

N ew York City, 1950s. The streets are alive, but broken. While New York City has become a melting pot of different cultures and ethnicities living together, this has not necessarily led to a peaceful coexistence. It also doesn’t help that different homes, apartments and condos are being torn down to make way for luxurious hotels, convention centers and plazas while racial tensions are occurring among the different communities.

Take, for example, the Jets (led by their leader “Riff”) and the Sharks (led by their leader “Bernardo”). The Jets, an Irish-American group of street—gangsters from downtown Manhattan, have had control of a large portion of their territory for quite some time. They see themselves as superior to all the other street gangs, especially to newcomers like the Sharks. The Sharks, however, are a Puerto-Rican group of street-gangsters that have claimed turf in Manhattan. Please, people, can’t we all just get along?

Apparently not. In fact, the Jets and Sharks are seen fighting each other quite often. One Jet that isn’t quite onboard with the street life anymore is a recently released and former criminal (turned nice guy), Anton (aka “Tony”) ( Ansel Elgort ).

On parole, Tony is trying to rebuild his life with honest work and by keeping his head low, until he meets the beautiful Maria ( Rachel Zegler ) while at a local school dance that the Jets and Sharks attend. It’s love at first sight for the two of them. Neither really cares that one’s a Shark and one’s a Jet. But the gangs themselves? Well, that’s a WHOLE ‘nother story.

The 1961 iconic film-musical, “West Side Story,” is a gem. There are some that would never have believed it was conceivable to reboot a story like “West Side Story.” If anyone was going to take on the challenge though, it was Steven Spielberg .

Spielberg as you are aware already has a plethora of Academy Award-winning films ranging from sci-fi to drama to historic and even biographical. So why was he so interested in dipping his hands into the film musical genre? Was it just to add another genre to his long list of successes, or was there something more?

In an interview with The Guardian , Spielberg mentioned that he grew up listening to and enamored with “West Side Story” and the soundtrack…

“It has never left my life,” he says. “I’ve played the cast album to my kids. They memorized the songs growing up. I’ve got videos where I’m running around the place playing Officer Krupke and all the Jets. Those videos prove how ‘West Side Story’ has permeated my entire life and the lives of my kids and grandkids. It’s crazy!”

Did it need to be remade? No, not really. As I said, the 1961 version is a prize. However, what Mr. Spielberg has done with this version of is extraordinary. From the iconic whistle heard at the beginning while staring at a blank screen to the very final blow at the conclusion of the film, every detail is carefully considered. However, Spielberg wasn’t trying to copy the 1961 version scene-for-scene. There is some originality to be found in some additional scenes that were NOT in the original 1961 film and backstories for primary and secondary characters that provide more depth and, perhaps, a new perspective.

One also cannot forget the breathtaking camerawork on display. From the first overhead view of the city, to the intimate closeups, every moment felt like I was transported to 1950s New York City. As one person mentioned in another review, I appreciated that the movie was filmed in a tinted-like fashion to make it seem like it was a film from the 1950s/60s.

The music cannot and should not be understated. From what information I could gather, there were many brilliant musicians who were brought into the fold for this project, including, composer David Newman who arranged and adapted Bernstein’s original score for the film. Gustavo Dudamel conducted the New York Philharmonic during the film’s recording sessions in 2019 (and some additional music was performed by the London Philharmonic). Jeanine Tesori served as vocal coach, while frequent Spielberg collaborator John Williams served as music consultant.

Additionally, all of the songs were pre-recorded and used as playback on set, with the exceptions of “One Hand, One Heart” “Somewhere” and “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love” which did not use the playback and were instead sung live on set. Portions of “Maria” were also sung live on set without the playback, as per Ansel Elgort’s request (he plays Tony). This attention to detail allowed for an impressive experience. Everyone’s voices were simply breathtaking, including newcomer Rachel Zegler (who plays Maria). But the person who really steals the show is Rita Moreno , who you may remember as Anita in the 1961 film. Not only does she play a completely different role in this adaptation (which I won’t spoil), but in the one solo she DOES have, she brought me to tears.

Objectionable Material

I do have one major issue with this adaptation of the film: the role of Anybodys. In the stage show and 1961 film, Anybodys is portrayed as a tomboy desperate to become a Jet, but in this 2021 version he/she is portrayed as a transgender character played by the “non-binary” actor Iris Menas. In fact, before the most comedic moments of the film, a scene in the 2021 film is added that is devoted JUST to point out that Anybodys is transexual (one of the Jets argues that he swears he checked and saw “something” underneath Anybodys skirt, if you catch my drift). There was absolutely no need to change Anybodys for the 2021 adaptation, but the filmmakers did so to conform to and find acceptance from the LGBTQA+ community.

VIOLENCE: Heavy. A character is shot twice and killed. A character is punched in the face repeatedly while refusing to fight, but eventually defends himself by almost beating another character to death. Two characters are stabbed to death. The Jets and Sharks beat each other up mercilessly before the police arrive. A character points a gun against a Jet’s forehead (the Jet dares him to shoot). A Jet pretends to shoot a real gun at the other Jets. Two characters discuss what weapons they will bring to a brawl (knives, bricks, chains, etc.) and later we see that the Jets and Sharks bring these items to the brawl. A kid has a nail in his ear after an incident. We see the Jets vandalize a painting of a Puerto Rican flag. We see a Jet rip a sign off a store. A character pushes another character. We see some characters boxing each other. A girl is slapped in the face by another girl.

VULGARITY: Heavy. “You shriveled d*ckhead dago pansy,” “Go s*ck on your sister’s t*tty.” “Go s*ck a pickle” (1), “Got a rocket, in your pocket,” fathers “knocking up some local pieces” (1), “Sh*t” (2), “Bullsh*t,” “Krupt You” (Takes the place of the F-bomb in a song), spic(s) (5), gr*ngo(s) (6), “big dumb pollack” (1), “d*ck” (1), “d*ckless wonder” (1), “P*shes tea” (drug reference) (1), “Mother has a mustache, father wears a dress” (1), “Cr*p,” “Who gives a fart?” (1), “A**” (2), “As long as he’s hot”

PROFANITY: Moderately Heavy. “ J*sus Chr*st ” (2), “J*sus” (2), “Jee,” “ Chr*st Alm*ghty” (2), “G*d- d*mn ” (4),“H*llmouth” (1), “ H*ll ” (1)

SEX: Two characters share passionate kisses in a few scenes. Two other characters share a couple kisses. As mentioned, Anybodys in this adaptation is played by an actor/actress who considers themselves non-binary and the character is transgender. Two characters are seen in bed together. Song lyrics include “A boy like that wants one thing only, and when he’s done, he’ll leave you lonely.”

NUDITY: Two characters are seen in bed together (we see their bare shoulders). Some female characters wear short shorts and one wears a revealing t-shirt. Upper male nudity. In some dance numbers, when the dresses move undergarments can be seen underneath. Cleavage.

DRUGS: Someone is shown smoking a cigarette. Cigarettes are mentioned in a song. Marijuana is referenced twice (once in a scene and once in a song).

ALCOHOL: Characters on a rooftop are seen drinking before a brawl.

OTHER: There are some themes involving racism and immigration layered throughout the film (they are much more present in this adaptation than in the original version [e.g., Puerto Ricans are reminded to speak English]). There is a scene at a morgue with two dead corpses.

There are many themes to draw from in a musical like “West Side Story.” One that really drew my attention was the theme of “hate.” It is apparent from the very first scene that the Jets and the Sharks, for no good reason, truly hate each other.

As Christians, we can hate evil. We can hate wickedness. However, we cannot hate each other. That is when hatred becomes sin .

“If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness , we lie and do not live out the truth .” — 1 John 1:6

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” — Ephesians 4:31

When you feel angry toward someone, turn it into prayer before it turns into hatred . Stop it in its tracks. Pray for those who wrong you or hurt you and ask God to forgive them and give you peace.

“ Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.” — Proverbs 10:12

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” — Luke 6:27-28

Final Thoughts

“West Side Story,” in 1961, set out to reinvent the timeless tale of Romeo and Juliet and introduce it to a new generation, just as the musical “Godspell” was used to help the youth understand the story of the Gospel better (in a more contemporary, yet respectful, manner).

As many other reviewers have pointed out, “West Side Story” (2021) is sure to inspire a brand new generation of audiences, just like the 1961 version did. This is certainly one of Spielberg’s finest works, and I’m sure no doubt this film will be a contender for many Oscars come February.

There are some issues of concern at play here, however, that will deter some from attending. The fact that Anybodys is transgender in this film is a red flag and entirely unnecessary. There is also some unnecessary sexual content and foul language that wasn’t present in the 1961 version. I definitely don’t think young kids should see this film.

• Violence: Heavy
• Vulgar/Crude language: Heavy
• Profane language: Moderately Heavy
• Sex: Moderate
• Drugs/Alcohol: Moderate
• Nudity: Mild
• Occult: None

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers .

• Non-viewer comments

PLEASE share your observations and insights to be posted here.

WEST SIDE STORY (2021)

"too clunky, too dark and too profane".

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Teenage rebellion, juvenile delinquency, teenagers are cynical about America and society.

More Detail:

WEST SIDE STORY (2021) is Director Steven Spielberg’s remake of the famous movie and stage musical about two “star-crossed” teenage lovers caught between two rival gangs from different ethnic backgrounds in New York City in the late 1950s. The love story, music and dancing in this version of WEST SIDE STORY have their moments, but they’re marred by clunky storytelling and directing, muddled dialogue, bad casting and many unnecessary profanities.

The movie pretty much follows the storyline of the 1960 movie directed by Robert Wise, who directed THE SOUND OF MUSIC and many other beloved classics. Two street gangs in 1950s New York City, the Jets and the Sharks, are fighting for territory. The leaders of the two gangs, Riff and Bernardo, decide to have a big rumble to decide who gets the territory.

Riff wants his friend, Tony, who just finished a one-year prison term for beating up a rival gang member, to join the fight. However, at a school dance, Tony falls in love with Bernardo’s sister, Maria. Maria asks Tony to stop the fight, but he fails. This results in terrible tragedy.

The music of the original play will survive this misguided remake. Although there’s no way the remake could match the exhilarating opening of the 1960 movie, Spielberg’s opening here is less than thrilling. That said, the love story, music and dancing in this version of WEST SIDE STORY have their moments, especially whenever Ansel Elgort, who plays Tony, sings. Ansel is the one real standout in the cast. For example, one of the movie’s highlights is his version of “Something’s Coming,” which introduces his character. Of special note is Rita Moreno, who won Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 1961 WEST SIDE STORY. The other cast members, however, aren’t as good as those who played in the 1961 movie. Sadly, some of the dialogue and some of the lyrics in some songs, especially the group songs, are muddied. Also, Spielberg has added a lot of untranslated Spanish dialogue to his movie, which is extremely annoying to those of us who don’t speak Spanish fluently. “En Los Estados Unidos, Señor Spielberg, hablemos Ingles!”

This version of WEST SIDE STORY has a light Christian, moral worldview. Like the original 1957 musical, love eventually overcomes the racial animosity between the two gangs. To push this message home, the movie contains a major song set inside the Cloisters museum & gardens with references to praying, the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and Catholic crosses with Jesus on them. Regrettably, the movie’s positive worldview is marred by strong pagan, immoral behavior, including too many strong profanities, which apparently were added to “modernize” the play. Also, in the 1961 movie, a girl wants to join the Jets. She’s depicted as a tomboy in that movie, but here, Spielberg and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner, have decided to make her look like an transsexual male.

MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for WEST SIDE STORY.

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West Side Story (2021)

An adaptation of the 1957 musical, West Side Story explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds.

Dove Review

Reimagined and then released exactly 60 years after the Oscar-winning original, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story remains largely faithful to the 1961 version, which in turn brought a 1957 Broadway play to the big screen.

The music and dance numbers retain much of their original feel in the aftermath of lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s recent passing as Spielberg directs his first musical, and there remains the can’t-miss Romeo-and-Juliet undertones that form the skeleton of the conflict between the Irish-heritage Jets and the Puerto Rican-heritage Sharks.

It’s cast more realistically, with the old brownface makeup set aside in favor of actual Latino actors playing members of the Sharks, led by Bernardo (David Alvarez), who even speak Spanish (without English subtitles, a seemingly subtle way of playing up the tensions between them and the Jets). It’s so faithful to the original, it even still has Rita Moreno, though age obviously prevents her from reprising her role as Maria’s fiery scene-stealing friend, Anita (played now by Ariana DeBose). Now, she’s Valentina  — a new character and widow of the original’s shopkeeper Doc, a voice of reason as the Jets and the Sharks fight over crumbling New York turf.

That said, there are, of course, other differences. Spielberg’s adaptation feels a bit grittier and a tomboy from the original is a transsexual male, played by an actor who identifies as non-binary in the 21st-century reimagining.

Unfortunately, the language also is a bit saltier and the violence more brutal, which precludes Dove approval. There’s an F-bomb and a few S-bombs in there now. Is that an argument against remaking a classic or is it a revelation that, with those updates slipped in so casually, maybe the original was built on a foundation that wasn’t as innocent as we’d all like to believe? The anti-Puerto Rican racist vibe in the original — echoed by characters like Jets leader Riff and police officer Krupke — was so palpable, Moreno recently revealed it made her feel “horrible” and she nearly quit over it.

But for those who loved the original, there will be much to love about Spielberg’s take, including Ansel Elgort’s performance as Tony.

The Dove Take

It’s romance set against the backdrop of gang warfare — what Romeo and Juliet might look like set to music of 1950s New York, with splashy colors and dance — and it comes with all the warts thereof.

Dove Rating Details

Passing references to it. Anita attends Mass, though it seems her mind is (ahem!) somewhere else. Tony and Maria have a kind of unofficial wedding they conduct themselves in a churchlike setting.

Anita tries to aid Tony and Maria's relationship, even at personal risk of others' alienation.

Tony and Maria kiss a lot, unofficially marry in a museum with churchy things, like an altar, where they kneel. Later, they sleep together. Bernardo and Anita live together, kiss a lot and (implied) do more than that.

Several GDs and misusings of Jesus’ name. One F-bomb, four S-bombs. Additionally, "a–,” “b-st-rd,” “cr-p,” “d–ck,” and “h-ll.” Racial and ethnic slurs.

Abundant. Jets and Sharks rumble in salt facility. Woman nearly raped in store. Knife fight. Gun fight. Tony beats a Jet half to death. There's a nail in the ear. Police are attacked.

Lots of cigarettes and alcohol. Reference to marijuana.

Lots of cleavage and leg showing. Bare-chested men.

More Information

Film information, dove content.

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• DVD & Streaming

West Side Story

• Drama , Musical

Content Caution

In Theaters

• December 10, 2021
• Ansel Elgort as Tony; Rachel Zegler as María; Ariana DeBose as Anita; David Alvarez as Bernardo; Rita Moreno as Valentina; Brian d'Arcy James as Officer Krupke; Corey Stoll as Lieutenant Schrank; Mike Faist as Riff; Josh Andrés Rivera as Chino; Iris Menas as Anybodys

Home Release Date

• March 1, 2022
• Steven Spielberg

Distributor

• 20th Century Studios

Movie Review

America’s been called the great melting pot. But sometimes, that pot boils over.

So it is in the mid-’50s on New York’s toughest streets. Crumbling neighborhoods are making way, block by block, for gleaming new apartments. Traditional Irish conclaves are becoming multicultural communities. And the Jets don’t like that one bit.

Riff insists the lily-white Jets are more than a street gang: They’re a family. And when you become a Jet, you’re always a Jet—“from your first cigarette to your last dying day.” The Jets are determined to defend their turf ’til the last brick tenament takes a wrecking ball to the gut. And all the folks with black or brown skin moving in? Well, the Jets’ll see that their skin turns black and blue instead.

The neighborhoods’ burgeoning Puerto Rican population, though, aims to make a home on those same streets—and those immigrants aren’t about to be pushed around by a bunch of thuggish Irish delinquents. Puerto Rican youth have created a gang of their own, called the Sharks. And if the Jets push them, the Sharks will push back—and push hard.

The rival gangs are on a collision course, and both can’t wait for the crash. At a dance held at the local high school—a dance designed to foster a little peace and even friendship—Riff’s ready to drop the gauntlet. He calls a summit between the Jets’ leaders and the Sharks, challenging Bernardo and his crew to an all-out rumble. The winners will claim the streets, crumbling tho’ they may be. The losers best keep their heads low and swagger lower. And if a loser sees a winner strutting down the sidewalk, he best turn and walk the other way.

Bernardo agrees, and the two set the terms: a runble at the old salt warehouse. Bricks and chains, fine. No knives or guns (wink wink). Yeah, the gangs will bleed, and bleed plenty.

But at that same dance, across the gym, a boy sees a girl. The girl eyes him back. And slowly, the two edge across the floor and meet behind the bleachers.

The boy, Tony, has indeed been a Jet from his first cigarette. He and Riff formed the group, and during the gang’s last all-out rumble—against a group of Egyptians—Tony nearly beat another guy to death. That little incident got him sent to prison for a good long while, and gave him a chance to think for a good long time. He’s been wondering whether life might have bigger plans for him.

But when he meets this beautiful Puerto Rican girl, he wonders no more. He knows .

Maria is Bernardo’s kid sister—just 18 but already set up with Chino, a smart guy who fixes adding machines. But while Chino is nice and all, she’s not crazy about him. The gringo she’s eyeing now? He’s different.

But do an Irish bad boy and a Puerto Rican good girl have a chance in this crazy, mixed-up world?

Positive Elements

Tony’s time in jail made him a better person—more aware of his own weaknesses and the dead-end direction his life was heading. When the movie opens, he’s severed most of his ties with the Jets, and he works honestly as a clerk for Valentina (an elderly woman who now runs her late husband’s drug store). And when Tony meets Maria, viewers get the sense that the whole trajectory of his life might change—where he’ll be living not just for himself, but for someone else, too. (That sense of commitment and devotion is echoed by both young lovers in the song “one hand, one heart,” where they pledge, and almost pray to “make of our lives one life.”)

Tony probably couldn’t have done as well for himself without Valentina, though. She gave him a job, a place to stay and offers some pretty cogent advice, too. And she, out of everyone, is willing to help Tony and Maria get a fresh start. (Her loyalty, it should be noted, arguably strays from purely positive territory, but you can’t question the grace she shows.) And honestly, you get the sense that if everyone in the neighborhood listened to Valentina, things might’ve gone much, much better.

We can’t praise most members of the Jets and Sharks much. But both serve as surrogate families of sorts. In the Jets’ case, that gang might be the only real family some of these guys have. We can’t completely dismiss the loyalty, camaraderie and brotherhood these gangs represent—even if those laudatory values get twisted in some terrible ways, as we’ll see.

One more flower to throw here: Anita, who’s Bernardo’s girlfriend, initially tries to help Maria and Tony—even though she knows what she’s being asked to do puts her in massive danger. That “help” goes badly awry, but the courage she shows initially should be praised.

Spiritual Elements

On their first real “date,” Tony takes Maria to The Cloisters, a New York museum that Maria says feels like a church. The two spend time in a very church-like room—complete with stained glass and statues of angels—where Maria kneels before an altar and encourages Tony to kneel with her. The two engage in what amounts to a self-officiated wedding there—sanctifying their love in a surprisingly traditional way before God.

That’s the most explicitly religious moment in the musical. But West Side Story’ s edges are tinged with spirituality throughout—from the cross hanging above Maria’s bed to faith-inflected dialogue (“I swear on all that’s holy!” Riff says at one point) to song lyrics. (Softly saying Maria’s name is “almost like praying,” according to Tony.) The Puerto Ricans we see seem firmly, if imperfectly, tied to the Catholic Church. Anita, for instance, attends mass—while singing a slightly scandalous song about what she and her boyfriend Bernardo will do later that evening. (She’s repeatedly shushed by her shawl-wearing friends.)

Sexual Content

We’ll need to spend some time with the character Anybodys here.

Anybodys—a sort of Jet tagalong—has been a part of West Side Story since it first came to stage in 1957. Though some LGBTQ advocates have characterized her as one of the stage’s first transgender characters, she was merely characterized as a tomboy for most of West Side Story ’s history—and one with a crush on Tony at that.

In this update of the original musical, Anybodys seems to push farther into official transgender territory. Played by Iris Menas, an actor classified as non-binary, Anybodys denies strongly that she’s a woman (even though one Jet says he’s peeked at Anybodys’ privates and can confirm otherwise), and the musical seems to stress Anybodys’ masculinity by having the character beat up a bunch of policemen.

But West Side Story also keeps intact lyrics from the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” which suggest that familial sexual fluidity (“My sister wears a mustache/My brother wears a dress”) is the reason for a character’s delinquency. (“Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!”)

Shortly after Tony and Maria sort of consecrate their relationship at that altar (emotionally, but not legally), the two sleep together. We see them briefly sitting up in bed, their shoulders (and in Tony’s case, part of his chest) exposed, but the rest covered by sheets. The couple kisses often.

Bernardo and Anita also smooch—often passionately—and sometimes make out as they close their bedroom door behind them. The two live together but aren’t married, though Bernardo expresses his wish that they were.

Characters wear outfits that can reveal quite a bit of cleavage and leg—but not much different from what we see in the 1961, G-rated movie.

Violent Content

West Side Story’ s peppy song-and-dance numbers are offset by moments of startling violence.

Perhaps the most difficult moment takes place in Doc’s drug store. Anita comes into the shop, which is filled with Jets. She’s not allowed to leave, and the woman is pawed and grabbed and eventually pulled down on the floor—her body obscured by the gang members, clearly intent on sexually abusing her. Valentina walks in before, it seems, that intent is fully carried out. But Anita’s dress is torn, and Valentina accuses the woman’s attackers of being “rapists.”

The Jets and Sharks clash repeatedly—most notably during a rumble at a salt storage facility.

Though knives and guns weren’t on the rumble’s itinerary, they show up anyway. Two characters get into a knife fight, and both wind up dead. (One lives on for a bit, despite having the blade handle jutting from his chest.) Both corpses are later seen in a morgue.

Two people beat each other pretty horrifically during the rumble, too: One character—Tony, if you must know—refuses at first to fight, and his assailant hits him repeatedly in the head and stomach. But when Tony does start swinging punches, he’s vicious: His opponent’s face is a mass of blood and bruises before Tony realizes just how close he is to killing the guy and withdraws. (It’s an echo of the beatdown Tony administered years earlier—one described in some detail and which got Tony sent to jail.)

In another fight, one guy ends up with a nail in his ear. (The ear bleeds, naturally, and extracting the nail is clearly painful.)

A man shoots another twice in the back, killing him. Guns are pointed and played with. Lots of threats are issued. People beat up each other, and one ferociously attacks a handful of policemen.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear four s-words and a number of other profanities, including “a–,” “b–tard,” “crap,” “d–k,” “g-dd–n” and “h—.” Jesus’ name is abused five times. Also worth noting: The song “Gee, Officer Krupke” is punctuated by a clear f-word stand-in. We hear some racial and ethnic slurs as well.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Several characters smoke, and we see plenty of cigarettes onscreen. Characters drink, too, and one scene takes place in a seedy bar. In “Gee, Officer Krupke,” Jets complain that “Our mothers all are junkies/Our fathers all are drunks,” adding that “With all their marijuana/They won’t give me a puff.”

Other Negative Elements

West Side Story is built on racial and ethnic tensions very much a part of New York in the 1950s. Though the characters’ biases are never lauded, they’re still quite obvious and, frankly, inescapable. The musical offers plenty of nods to police overreach, too, with Puerto Ricans telling officers that the police often take the side of the Jets. (In the movie, we can see they have a point.)

Both gangs are made up of disaffected youth, and the Jets seem particularly bent on terrorizing the neighborhood (especially anyone who doesn’t look like them). We see them rip down shop signs, vandalize a painting of a Puerto Rican flag and shoplift. Mothers snatch their kids off the sidewalks when they see the Jets approaching, and many adults scurry away, too.

West Side Story is an old story. Really old.

It’s based on Shakespeare’s classic tale of star-crossed lovers, Romeo & Juliet , replacing the warring Italian clans of the Montagues and Capulets with the Jets and Sharks. It was a massive hit on Broadway back in 1957, and it got even bigger when it moved to the screen in 1961. Featuring Rita Moreno, Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood (who didn’t sing a note), the first film version of West Side Story won 10 of the 11 Academy Awards it was nominated for and was the highest-grossing film of the year. The American Film Institute ranks it as the second-greatest musical ever made—just behind Singin’ in the Rain .

So why make another?

Director Steven Spielberg says that the soundtrack for West Side Story was “actually the first piece of popular music our family allowed into the home,” according to Vanity Fair . “I … fell completely in love with it as a kid.” He also told Yahoo that the musical—what with its issues of racial and ethnic strife, feels quite timely, “more relevant to today’s audience than perhaps it even was in 1957.”

But the end product is surprisingly—even refreshingly—traditional. It adheres closer to the original Broadway production than the 1961 film, and it feels, top to bottom, like an old-fashioned musical. People burst into song for no reason. Gang members twirl around each other as they grapple for a gun.

Like all musicals, it’s a little insane if you step out of the film’s conceit. But if you’re in it—and Spielberg makes it easy to slip into that vibe—it works. And as an extra treat, it features Rita Moreno, who arguably stole the show in the original 1961 film and (as a poignant Valentina) threatens to do so again here, 60 years later.

For all of that, West Side Story also dispels a longstanding notion that many of us have: that classic musicals are squeaky-clean relics of a more innocent age.

This new version doesn’t deviate much from the original West Side Story , and yet it contains violence, allusions to sex and loads of nods to drinking and smoking. And where it does deviate, it gets rougher. I don’t recall any s-words in the 1961 film. And while Anybodys was there, she wasn’t quite as aggressively transgender as the character is here.

All of that makes West Side Story a bit of a mixed bag. Did we need another? Steven Spielberg at least makes a case that we did. Do we need to see it? Well, that’s another side of the story.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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It may not be as widely regarded now, but the American musical remains one of the great exports of the 20th century. The great thing about it is that it’s one of the purest distillations of spectacle and talent possible to put on screen. It takes genuine talent, singing ability, acting ability, precise choreography, and a commitment to the form. 

At its height, old Hollywood musicals like Singing in the Rain, The Sound of Music , and the original West Side Story were massive critical and financial successes. I think it’s the cultural aspect that’s attracted the elderly Steven Spielberg to realize his own vision of West Side Story as a massive $100 million blockbuster musical, his 32nd film to date in his legendary five-decade career. 

Content Guide

Violence/Scary Images:  Some brief moments of blood and violence. A character has a nail stabbed through his ear. Several characters die from mostly bloodless stab or gunshot wounds Language/Crude Humor:  Some brief language; g*dd**n.  Sexual Content:  Characters have sex offscreen. Frequent cleavage, and low cut dresses. Drug/Alcohol Use:  References to alcohol. Characters smoke. Spiritual Content : Most of the characters are implicitly Catholic. Other Negative Themes:  Depictions of gang violence, hatred, racism, attempted sexual assault, and murder. Positive Content:  Themes of love, overcoming bigotry, and life.

Steven Spielberg is in a distinctly unpopular stage of his career. His last decade of work has been directing old-school moralistic dramas like Lincoln, Bridge of Spies , and The Post . He’s mostly outgrown the blockbuster instincts that gave him a career between masterpieces like Jaws and Saving Private Ryan , in favor of the contemplative, personal and beautifully constructed works of filmmaking that run creative laps around the rest of what the industry is focusing on. 

Sadly that instinctual change has meant audiences have stayed far away from his current run of films. West Side Story in particular seems to suffer from that. It only grossed $16 million on its opening weekend and may not earn back its budget. The blockbuster audiences that once crowded to Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET , and Jurassic Park seem eager to avoid it in favor of contemporary blockbusters like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Ghostbusters Afterlife (blockbusters that ironically could only exist in the space that Spielberg created with his movies).

Some of my fellow film critics have disparaged this film’s box office performance as an outgrowth of the box office backlash against “woke” films, much like Eternals which also relatively bombed. Frankly though, outside of the insertion of a transgender character and some commentary on racism and gentrification, the film is a known quantity. The story has been around since 1957 and it’s mostly identical to its predecessors. If anything, Spielberg’s sensibilities have just skewed too far outside the zeitgeist for a film to have mass appeal. The market for old-school sentimentalist blockbusters has dried up in 2021. That’s a shame because West Side Story is some sort of masterpiece. 

Like its predecessors, the story follows the rivalry of two gangs in Manhattan; the Jets and the Sharks. One is a gang of poor white men and the other is a gang of poor Puerto Rican immigrants who just moved to New York City within the last generation. The city as we see it is in the midst of gentrification, where poor tenants are evicted and their homes are destroyed to make way for new building projects. The pressure is high as both sides realize they’re being priced out of their homes, leading those impacted to find comfort in their gangs, festering a mutual racial hatred for each other. 

Amid this, two relatives of gang members meet at a local high school dance and fall deeply in love with each other. Their impossible multiracial romance causes trouble within the gangs, who decide to resolve their mutual hatred with a long-desired confrontation which both sides hope can turn violent and resolve their conflicts once and for all. 

West Side Story is famously an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and as such the story isn’t exactly hard to predict. It’s a tragic romance story about irrational hatred, clannish violence, and the poor souls who are crushed in between them. Like the original Robert Wise film adaption from 1961, it’s a massive work of spectacle and musical melodrama that realizes its story with heights of joy and campy dance sequences.

With the help of his brilliant cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, he’s crafted the kind of luscious, vibrant musical filmmaking that Hollywood can’t create anymore. The film has the same warm, sentimental color grading of Bridge of Spies and it gives the film a kind of timeless quality like he’s almost managed to reverse engineer to look of 1950s technicolor in the age of digital filmmaking. He poured his $100 million budget into creating a staged/CGI rendition of New York City that looks real and weighs heavily on the background of every scene. The dance choreography is perfect and every scene follows it with mechanical precision in only the way a great director can achieve.

Spielberg follows the original story loyally but does take the liberty to make small changes to the script and story. The aforementioned gentrification subtexts are new, reflecting modern political anxieties. The film also borrows elements from the 2009 Broadway revival, which had the Puerto Rican character dialogue partially translated into Spanish by Lin Manuel Miranda of In the Heights and Hamilton fame. 

The small touches do fundamentally shift elements of the film’s themes in some regard. The setting of demolished New York apartments creates an almost apocalyptic and oppressive tone. One can almost sense Spielberg speaking to modern racial anxieties about inner-city violence and blight. This is a world that’s dying, filled with people who hate each other and only understand racial loyalties. Spielberg also downplays the nature/nurture themes of the original film to more heavily condemn the implicit racism and cruelty of the white Jet gang, who are presented as wannabe rapists who scream topical quotes like “go back where you came from” at Latina women.

The result is an angrier film than its predecessor, less sympathetic, and more reactionary than earlier versions. One can almost sense some of the latent nihilism he explored in films like A.I. Artificial Intelligence , War of the Worlds , and Munich bubbling up once again.

The result is a film distinct from its predecessor that also feels incredibly contemporary. Even with contemporary attempts to resurrect the Hollywood musical with the likes of Les Miserables, La La Land , and The Greatest Showman , the American musical hasn’t felt this huge in decades. West Side Story is the kind of massive spectacle filmmaking that Hollywood used to make with regularity and now only someone with as much clout as Steven Spielberg can resurrect it. It’s an energetic work, brimming with moralism and high melodrama. Spielberg has truly crafted something that Hollywood is never going to see again, at least if the box office is any indication.

+ Beautiful cinematography + Great performances from its entire cast + Excellent musical numbers and dance choreographies + Incredible production design

- Some story elements changed to appeal to modern sensibilities - Subtextually bleak story implications and themes

The Bottom Line

West Side Story is another notch in the belt of Spielberg's late-career transition into cinema's greatest sentimentalist. While most audiences don't appreciate what some have called the "Frank Capra" stage of his career, West Side Story proves the 74-year-old director is still at the top of his game and driven to create energetic and fresh work!

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Steven Spielberg ’s eloquent and graceful “West Side Story” opens with the familiar image of the Jets prowling across New York City. They toss paint cans to one another, gathering in larger numbers as they slink and slide through the streets. Occasionally, their strides break into a dance move—a spin or a slide across the pavement—always in unison. It’s almost as if they can’t help it, as if they need to express themselves through movement. Much of “West Side Story” is about that need, that sense of something under the surface that just has to escape—restlessness, passion, anger, displacement—the sense that “something’s coming” that so many people feel when they’re young. Immediately, one can feel the craftsmanship of this restaging of the classic Broadway smash. The camera doesn’t just capture action on a set—it glides with the performers, and we glide along with them. The editing avoids the choppy rhythms of so many recent musicals, allowing viewers to feel motion and connection. We are instantly hooked and will be for the next 2.5 hours.

Fans of the original stage production and beloved film will argue over the need for a 2021 version of “West Side Story,” although restaging a classic play is an annual event in major theaters around the world. For some reason, remakes in film are more often seen as attempts to supplant an original whereas theater goers are accustomed to the process of new voices interpreting classic texts. The new voices here are those of absolute geniuses, including Spielberg, writer Tony Kushner ( Angels in America ), cinematographer Janusz Kaminski , choreographer Justin Peck , and a stunning ensemble of new voices and talented veterans. Kushner and Spielberg have stayed loyal to the play and original film while also making notable changes in a way that makes it fresh and vibrant. And they have staged their production in a way that’s often mesmerizing. One misguided casting decision holds it back from absolute greatness but there are so many breathtaking, perfect sequences in this “West Side Story” that I suspect it will do what the original did for a lot of people, including this critic who was raised on movie musicals—make them a fan of the entire genre.

The opening sequence sets up the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks. The former group of tough-talking New Yawkers is led by Riff ( Mike Faist , giving one of several star-making performances in the film), who is tired of the Sharks taking the city that he thinks belongs to him. Leading the Puerto Rican Sharks is Bernardo ( David Alvarez ), a boxer who isn’t about to give an inch to anyone and who warns his sister Maria ( Rachel Zegler ) to never even look at a “gringo.” That doesn’t last long. Maria, Bernardo, and his partner Anita ( Ariana DeBose ) go to a dance that night where Maria catches the eye of Tony ( Ansel Elgort ), a former Jet who is trying to go straight. Just released from prison after nearly killing a guy, Tony lives in the basement of the store in which he works, watched over by a mother figure named Valentina (a transcendent Rita Moreno , who won an Oscar for the first film and could do so again).

Of course, anyone even vaguely familiar with the Shakespeare-inspired original knows that this New York Romeo falls hard for his Puerto Rican Juliet. And yet Spielberg and Kushner find new notes to hit in a musical that many know by heart. The changes are not superficial but feel like elements that are being pulled out of the original in a way that 2021 audiences will see differently than those did in 1961, including enriching the immigrant narrative at the center of this piece. Characters like Maria, Bernardo, and Anita have a rich back story that the original never allowed, and Spielberg also allows his historian side to influence the take, opening the film with a shot of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts under construction—a job that historically pushed immigrant communities out of that part of the city. So much of “West Side Story” takes place against a backdrop of crumbling facades or under the shadow of a wrecking ball. It’s a glorious symbol of not only a time when the city and country were changing but how it reflects the incomplete nature of these young people looking for their lives to be built.

In terms of performance, “West Side Story” make instant stars of at least three people: Mike Faist, Ariana DeBose, and Rachel Zegler. Of course, theatre fans don’t need an introduction to DeBose, a Tony nominee who was in the original production of Hamilton . As anyone who knows the original can tell you, DeBose gets the showstopper in “ America ,” and it is one of the cinematic highlights of the year. Spielberg and Kushner pull the number down from the rooftops, sending Anita and her friends through the streets, dancing and singing with such passion that you can sense it through the camera. Spielberg and Kaminski’s staging here is stunning, moving so gracefully around the performers in a way that’s never distracting but only designed to make sure you don’t miss a thing. The camerawork incorporates a little too much lens flare but it’s the framing and fluidity that make it exemplary.

Faist and Zegler also find that well of passion that Riff and Maria need. On the other hand, Elgort rarely feels like he’s on the same page. These characters need to be almost jittery with the adrenalin of youth—an uncontrollable feeling that leads them to dance, to love, to fight. Everyone gets that but Elgort. He’s a blank slate in the first half, brought slightly to life by the melodrama but never enough to stop the thoughts of what could have been with a performer who better understood Tony’s desperation. He’s caught between friendship and love, knowing that giving into either could send him back to jail or worse. Elgort never conveys those stakes.

Luckily, everything around him does. Faist finds a remarkable vulnerability in Riff; Zegler makes you believe that love has her feeling pretty; Alvarez nails the over-protective nature of men who go too far; DeBose has arguably the largest range from “America” to the end of Anita’s tragic arc. And then there’s Rita Moreno. When I realized a moment that she was about to have in terms of one of the original songs from the show, I gasped. She grounds the final act of the film in a way that it really needs.

There’s so much beauty in this “West Side Story.” It merges things that have truly shaped pop culture from the graceful precision of Spielberg—who has always had a musical director’s eye in terms of how he choreographs his scenes—to the masterful songwriting of Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein to the brilliant writing of Tony Kushner to the immigrant experience in this country. It grabs you from the very beginning and takes you there. Somehow, someday, somewhere.

Now playing in theaters.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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West Side Story (2021)

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, strong language, thematic content, suggestive material and brief smoking.

156 minutes

Ansel Elgort as Tony

Rachel Zegler as Maria

Rita Moreno as Valentina

Ariana DeBose as Anita

David Alvarez as Bernardo

Corey Stoll as Lieutenant Schrank

Brian d'Arcy James as Sergeant Krupke

Josh Andrés Rivera as Chino

Mike Faist as Riff

Ana Isabelle as Rosalia

Paloma Garcia-Lee as Graziella

Maddie Ziegler as Velma

Andrea Burns as Fausta

Ricardo Zayas as Chago

• Steven Spielberg

Writer (based on the stage play, book by)

• Arthur Laurents
• Tony Kushner

Cinematographer

• Janusz Kaminski
• Michael Kahn
• Leonard Bernstein

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‘West Side Story’ Review: In Love and War, 1957 Might Be Tonight

Steven Spielberg rediscovers the breathing, troubling essence of a classic, building a bold and current screen musical with no pretense to perfection.

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By A.O. Scott

“West Side Story” sits near the pinnacle of post-World War II American middlebrow culture. First performed on Broadway in 1957 and brought to the screen four years later , it survives as both a time capsule and a reservoir of imperishable songs. What its creators attempted — a swirling fusion of literary sophistication and contemporary social concern, of playfulness and solemnity, of realism and fantasy, of street fighting and ballet — hadn’t quite been attempted before, and hasn’t been matched since.

The idea of harnessing the durable tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” to the newsy issues of juvenile delinquency and ethnic intolerance must have seemed, to Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim, both audacious and obvious. In the years since, “West Side Story” has proved irresistible — to countless high-school musical theater programs and now to Steven Spielberg, whose film version reaffirms its indelible appeal while making it feel bold, surprising and new.

This isn’t to say that the show has ever been perfect . Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics (and who died just after Thanksgiving at 91 ), frequently disdained his own contributions, including the charming “I Feel Pretty.” The depiction of Puerto Rican and Anglo (or “gringo”) youth gangs has been faulted for sociological imprecision and cultural insensitivity. Shakespeare’s Verona might not translate so easily into the slums of mid-20th-century Manhattan.

But perfection has never been a relevant standard for musicals. The genre has always been a glorious, messy mash-up of aesthetic transcendence and commercial ambition, a grab-bag of styles and sources held together by the energy, ingenuity and sheer chutzpah of scrappy and resourceful artists. This may be especially true at the movies, where the technology of cinema can enhance and also complicate the artistry.

Spielberg’s version, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner that substantially revises Laurents’s book and new choreography by Justin Peck that pays shrewd tribute to Robbins’s genius, can’t be called flawless. The performances are uneven. The swooning romanticism of the central love story doesn’t always align with the roughness of the setting. The images occasionally swerve too bumpily from street-level naturalism to theatrical spectacle. The seams — joining past to present, comedy to tragedy, America to dreamland — sometimes show.

But those seams are part of what makes the movie so exciting. It’s a dazzling display of filmmaking craft that also feels raw, unsettled and alive. Rather than embalming a classic with homage or aggressively reinventing it, Spielberg, Kushner, Peck and their collaborators (including the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, the production designer Adam Stockhausen, the editors Sarah Broshar and Michael Kahn and the composers Jeanine Tesori and David Newman) have rediscovered its breathing, thrilling essence.

The 1961 movie, directed by Robbins and Robert Wise, was partly filmed on location in a neighborhood that was already vanishing. In Spielberg’s 1957, the destruction is well underway. Wrecking balls and cranes tower over piles of smashed masonry that were once tenement buildings. A sign posted at one of the demolition sites shows a rendering of the shiny Lincoln Center arts complex that will rise where the slums once stood.

This “West Side Story” is explicitly historical, grounded in a specific moment in New York City’s past. Kushner ( whom I profiled in a recent issue of T, The New York Times Style Magazine ) has brought a level of scholarly care to the screenplay far beyond what Laurents and the others were able or willing to muster.

Shakespeare’s play supposes “two households, both alike in dignity”; in Act III, Mercutio famously calls down “a plague” on both of them. But such symmetry, while structurally necessary to the source material — who were the Montagues and Capulets, anyway, and who really cares? — doesn’t map easily onto the West Side as Kushner and Spielberg understand it.

The Jets and the Sharks, a white teenage gang and their Puerto Rican antagonists, aren’t mirror images of each other. Ostensibly contending for control over a few battered blocks in the West 60s, they collide like taxis speeding toward each other on a one-way street.

The Sharks are children of an upwardly striving, migrant working class, a generation (or less) removed from mostly rural poverty in the Caribbean and determined to find a foothold in the imperial metropolis, where they are greeted with prejudice and suspicion. Bernardo (David Alvarez), their leader, is a boxer. His girlfriend, Anita (Ariana DeBose), works as a seamstress, while his younger sister, Maria (Rachel Zegler), toils on the night shift as a cleaner at Gimbels department store. Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera), who Bernardo and Anita believe would be a good match for Maria, is a bespectacled future accountant. (But of course Maria falls for Tony, a reluctant Jet played by the heartthrobby Ansel Elgort.) All of them have plans, aspirations, dreams. The violence of the streets is, for Bernardo, a necessary and temporary evil, something to be overcome through hard work and communal cohesion on the way to something better.

The Jets, by contrast, are the bitter remnant of an immigrant cohort that has, for the most part, moved on — to the Long Island suburbs and the bungalows of Queens, to a share of postwar prosperity. As the policemen Officer Krupke (Brian D’Arcy James) and Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll) are on hand to explain — and as the Jets themselves testify — these kids are the product of family dysfunction and societal neglect. Without aspirations for the future, they are held together by clannish loyalty and racist resentment — an empty sense of white entitlement and a perpetually expanding catalog of grievances. Their nihilism is embodied by Riff (the rangy Mike Faist), the kind of brawler who would rather fight than win.

As the song says: “Life can be bright in America/If you can fight in America.” But what lingers after this “West Side Story” is a darkness that seems to belong more to our own angry, tribal moment than to the (relatively) optimistic ’50s or early ’60s. The heartbreak lands so heavily because the eruptions of joy are so heady. The big comic and romantic numbers — “Tonight,” “America” and, yes, “I Feel Pretty” — burst with color and feeling, and the silliness of “Officer Krupke” cuts like an internal satire of some of the show’s avowed liberal pieties.

The cast members — notably including Rita Moreno, who was Anita in 1961 and who returns as a weary, wise pharmacist named Valentina — bring exactly the sincerity and commitment that a movie like this requires. There’s a reason “West Side Story” is a staple of the performing arts curriculum, and for all the Hollywood bells and whistles, the essence of Spielberg’s version is a bunch of kids snapping their fingers and singing their hearts out.

The voices are, all in all, pretty strong. Zegler sings some of the most challenging numbers with full-throated authority, but she and Elgort don’t fully inhabit the grand, life-altering (and -ending) passion that their roles require. Tony and Maria are sweet and likable, but also a bit bland, and their whirlwind progress from infatuation to eternal devotion, which unfolds over a scant two days, feels shallow against the big, complicated forces moving around them.

This is partly a consequence of Kushner and Spielberg’s commitment to realism and historical nuance, and in some ways it works to the movie’s advantage. The center of tragic gravity shifts away from Tony and Maria to Bernardo and Anita, and also to Riff. It helps that Alvarez, Faist and — supremely — DeBose are such magnetic performers. When DeBose is onscreen, nothing else matters but what Anita is feeling. But the characters also have a deeper, more complicated stake in the story. They aren’t just foils or catalysts for the action, as their counterparts are in Shakespeare. They are the ones for whom the question of what it is to be in America becomes a matter of life and death.

West Side Story Rated PG-13. Never was a story of more woe. Running time: 2 hours 36 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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West side story, common sense media reviewers.

Musical masterpiece tackles race, with some violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Explores themes of social injustice and judicial c

Maria is an inspirational role model who doesn't b

Features two gangs, one White and one Puerto Rican

Big fight scene leads to two characters being stab

Brief reference to sex work and some kissing.

Words "hell" and "s--t" are used, as are derogator

Coca-Cola bottles and boxes are moved about, and c

A musical number mentions drinking and the use of

Parents need to know that West Side Story is co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1950s New York. It stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer and explores race relations and immigration in a musical format that pits a White gang against a Puerto Rican one…

Positive Messages

Explores themes of social injustice and judicial corruption in mid-1950s New York and encourages viewers to question the meaning of "liberty." Although America is known as "land of the free," movie portrays how incoming immigrants struggle and are discriminated against. Revolves around love budding between two people who come from groups that hate each other. But violent, climactic ending leaves an open question as to whether love really conquers all, especially racial hatred.

Positive Role Models

Maria is an inspirational role model who doesn't believe in fighting or war. She's able to view people for who they really are, rather than focusing on race or social class. Male role models are lessons to be learned from. Riff and Bernardo are unable to let their hate for one another subside. Determined to hurt each other, they'll fight to the death, even if it's at the expense of someone else's life.

Diverse Representations

Features two gangs, one White and one Puerto Rican. While many major characters are meant to be Puerto Rican, nearly all actors except Anita (played by Puerto Rican icon Rita Moreno) are non-Hispanic White. Movie relies heavily on inaccurate Spanish accents and stereotypes of Latinos as gang members.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Big fight scene leads to two characters being stabbed to death. In another scene, a female character is sexually assaulted. Lastly, a character is tragically shot to death, and another character points a gun and threatens to kill others and then themselves.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Words "hell" and "s--t" are used, as are derogatory names: "spic" and "Polack." Someone pokes fun at Anita for being "queer for Uncle Sam."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Coca-Cola bottles and boxes are moved about, and classic Chevrolet cars line the streets. Bromo Seltzer and Tootsie Roll also seen.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A musical number mentions drinking and the use of specific drugs. In dialogue, brief references to alcoholism. Many characters smoke cigarettes (accurate for the era).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that West Side Story is co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1950s New York. It stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer and explores race relations and immigration in a musical format that pits a White gang against a Puerto Rican one. Despite touching on race, only one of the main actors, Rita Moreno , is Latina. The movie includes several negative stereotypes about Latinos. Street fighting and knifings are depicted, though the impact of some of the violence is lessened by the choreography. In one disturbing scene, a gang of young men physically abuse a young woman, and sexual assault takes place. A major character is shot and killed. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (6)
• Kids say (44)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Don't foget

Classic movie for the right audience, what's the story.

A classic American musical with strong social commentary, WEST SIDE STORY updates Shakespeare's tragedy about star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, to 1950s New York City, where second-generation American street gang the Jets, led by Riff ( Russ Tamblyn ), are at constant odds with rival Puerto Rican gang the Sharks. A showdown is inevitable, but love gets in the way when Jets member Tony ( Richard Beymer ) falls for Maria ( Natalie Wood ), the sister of Sharks leader Bernardo (George Chakiris). People die and hearts get broken.

Is It Any Good?

Co-directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, this beautiful musical is a visual masterpiece packed with talent. The music of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim is unforgettable, as are the Oscar-winning performances of George Chakiris as Bernardo and Rita Moreno as Anita, the spunky girlfriend of Bernardo and confidant of Maria.

The raging emotions of the characters are expressed through song and dance (Jerome Robbins' choreography mixes jazz, ballet, and Latin influences), resulting in a kinetic display of emotion more expressive than words. Stylish streetwise sets and cinematic technique take West Side Story to another level, rich with visual symbolism.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the issues of racism, immigration, gangs, and youth culture. What do you think the two gangs in West Side Story would say about the American Dream?

What kinds of stereotypes are explored in this movie? Does the movie serve to challenge or reinforce stereotypes?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 23, 1961
• On DVD or streaming : April 1, 2002
• Cast : Natalie Wood , Richard Beymer , Rita Moreno
• Directors : Jerome Robbins , Robert Wise
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors
• Studio : MGM/UA
• Genre : Musical
• Topics : Arts and Dance , Brothers and Sisters , Friendship
• Run time : 152 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : January 31, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Movie Reviews

Steven spielberg's 'west side story' will make you believe in movies again.

Justin Chang

Ariana DeBose (center) is Anita in West Side Story. 20th Century Studios hide caption

Ariana DeBose (center) is Anita in West Side Story.

A lot of us had our doubts when we heard that Steven Spielberg would be directing a new version of West Side Story , and not just because of Hollywood remake fatigue. In the decades since it first appeared on Broadway in 1957, the Romeo and Juliet -inspired story of two warring New York street gangs has generated more than its share of criticism, especially over the writing and the casting of its Puerto Rican characters. Even the beloved 1961 movie inspires groans now for having cast Natalie Wood in the lead role of María, and for forcing Rita Moreno , the only Puerto Rican in the cast, to wear dark brown makeup as Anita.

Movie Interviews

Rita moreno on 'west side story' and becoming the role model she needed.

Sixty years later, Moreno is an executive producer on Spielberg's West Side Story . She also gives a poignant performance in the new role of Valentina, the widow of Doc, the drugstore owner. By her presence, Moreno teaches us how to approach this movie, as both an affectionate tribute and a gentle corrective.

Spielberg and his regular screenwriter of late, the playwright Tony Kushner , give us a tougher, grimier vision of the Upper West Side in the 1950s. We see the working-class neighborhood of San Juan Hill, home to mostly Black and Latino residents, being demolished to make way for new developments like Lincoln Center. There's a heightened sense of hostility between the Puerto Rican gang known as the Sharks and their white rivals, the Jets, and their rumbles are startlingly violent.

'Fresh Air' remembers Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim (Part 1)

Adding to the realism is the fact that the Sharks are played by actors of Latino descent. They include David Alvarez as Bernardo, the brash leader of the Sharks, and Ariana DeBose as his girlfriend, Anita. Both actors are superb, as is Rachel Zegler, making a fine screen debut as Bernardo's little sister, María.

The story hasn't changed: María falls into an ill-fated romance with Tony, a former member of the Jets, played by Ansel Elgort. Early in the film, the two meet surreptitiously on María's fire escape, singing "Tonight," one of the many classic Leonard Bernstein - Stephen Sondheim songs gloriously revived in the movie.

Fishko Files

The real-life drama behind 'west side story'.

What's remarkable about this and the other numbers is how brilliantly Spielberg directs them. West Side Story is the first musical he's ever made, but it's no surprise that he's a natural at it: Few other American filmmakers have a more instinctive sense of rhythm and visual flow, or more direct access to your emotions.

Spielberg stages the numbers like an old-school Hollywood classicist, with none of the overly jumpy editing that might distract from the dancing. When the Jets and the Sharks meet up at a school dance, their clashing tempers and bodies pull you in with an almost physical force. And when Anita and Bernardo sing "America," their rousing song about the pleasures and perils of assimilation, the scene builds from a domestic squabble to a joyous party in the streets, which Spielberg shoots in a vibrant whirl of color and movement.

The Tony-winning choreographer Justin Peck wrings some clever variations on Jerome Robbins' original dance moves, whether it's the Jets wreaking havoc in a police station house during their big comic-relief number, "Gee, Officer Krupke," or Tony and his friends tossing around a pistol during a tense performance of the song "Cool."

Speaking of Tony's friends: As Riff, the leader of the Jets, Mike Faist gives one of the movie's standout performances. The weak link in the cast is Elgort: He can sing and dance, but there's an emotional flatness to his acting that doesn't quite gel with the much livelier Zegler.

Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway legend, has died at 91

Spielberg can't solve everything that's creaky and dated about West Side Story as a text. But he knows that the show still has something resonant to say about racism and violence in any era, including ours. The reason the movie works so well stems, I think, from a curious paradox: This West Side Story may be grittier and more realistic than the original movie, but it also feels more thrillingly old-fashioned than anything a Hollywood studio has released in ages.

By the end, I wasn't moved so much by Tony and María's sweet, somewhat drippy romance or the fatalistic drama between the Jets and the Sharks. I was moved by Spielberg's conviction, his sheer faith in the transporting power of movies. For two-and-a-half hours, he makes you a believer again.

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• West Side Story

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West Side Story

An adaptation of the 1957 musical, West Side Story explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. An adaptation of the 1957 musical, West Side Story explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. An adaptation of the 1957 musical, West Side Story explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds.

• Steven Spielberg
• Tony Kushner
• Arthur Laurents
• Ansel Elgort
• Rachel Zegler
• Ariana DeBose
• 797 User reviews
• 331 Critic reviews
• 85 Metascore
• 72 wins & 292 nominations total

• Officer Krupke

• Lieutenant Schrank

• (as David Avilés Morales)

• (as Ricardo A. Zayas)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Rita Moreno Breaks Down 6 of Her Iconic Roles

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Did you know

• Trivia The songs "One Hand, One Heart" and "A Boy Like That/I Have a Love" were performed live on set by Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler & Ariana DeBose and Zegler respectively. Sections of "Maria" were also sung live on set by Elgort, as per his request. All other songs were filmed to the more traditional playback technique. "Somewhere" was also sung live on set by Rita Moreno.
• Goofs The 9th (Columbus) Ave elevated train tracks in the Upper West Side were removed after their closure in 1940.

Tony : All my life, it's like I'm always just about to fall off the edge of the world's tallest building. I stopped falling the second I saw you.

• Crazy credits The end credits feature a dedication to Steven Spielberg 's father Arnold Spielberg with a simple "For Dad".
• Connections Alternate-language version of West Side Story (1961)
• Soundtracks Prologue Music by Leonard Bernstein

User reviews 797

• cedricmsanders
• Dec 27, 2021
• How long is West Side Story? Powered by Alexa
• Dance is a very important element in "West Side Story," but no choreographer is listed in the credits. Will Jerome Robbins' groundbreaking original choreography be recreated?
• The original release date was in December 2020. Is it true it will now be released December 2021?
• When are we going to see a trailer?
• December 10, 2021 (United States)
• United States
• 20th Century Studios (United States)
• Amblin (United States)
• San Juan Hill
• Paterson, New Jersey, USA
• 20th Century Studios
• Amblin Entertainment
• Amblin Partners
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $100,000,000 (estimated)
• $38,530,322
• $10,574,618
• Dec 12, 2021
• $76,016,171

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 36 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• IMAX 6-Track

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Movie Review: West Side Story

Director Steven Spielberg adored "West Side Story" as a child. Now, he’s remade the classic musical 60 years later—an effort that’s both true to the original, and which has a bit more content than the 1961 version. Read the Plugged In review: https://www.pluggedin.com/movie-reviews/west-side-story-2021/ If you've listened to any of our podcasts, please give us your feedback: https://focusonthefamily.com/podcastsurvey/

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West Side Story Reviews

Loaded with innumerable and distinguished songs by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim (each one an earworm of its own), West Side Story is a tale of race and social decorum and is an incredibly inventive adaptation of the legendary Shakespeare story.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2023

This is a movie that pretends to deal with racial tensions. The lyrics keep telling us this is what it's about and the critics seem to accept the authors' word for it.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2022

The film version of West Side Story often pops up on Greatest Movie of All Time lists thanks to its unique blending of realism & metaphorical dance and performances by Oscar-winners Chakaris and, in particular, Rita Moreno.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 20, 2022

R&J American style still packs a punch

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2021

Great example of a kind of cinema extint in Hollywood right now. [Full Review in Spanish].

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 16, 2021

It's easy to get swept away by the sheer muchness of it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 13, 2021

One of the lovely things about West Side Story is Rita Moreno, whose acting and dancing are elegant. Chakiris is darkly handsome and effective, and Tamblyn is great on the dancing.

Full Review | Dec 2, 2021

[West Side Story] is at least the best screen musical since On the Town and may not get all the praise it deserves: it is galvanic, technically thrilling, and stylised with a neurotic skill sometimes only just short of genius.

It roars with the hatreds of street battle. It twinkles with joyous motion which turns into fierce agitation as the stresses of misunderstanding speed the players into an uncontrollable maelstrom.

It is Robbins' vision -- of city life expressed in stylized movement that sometimes flowers into dance and song -- that lifts this picture high.

The whole cast shows wonderful vitality and spirit.

In spine-tingling tempo, with eye-dazzling color and ear-teasing music it recites no corny backstage drama but cuts instead a meaty parallel to the Romeo and Juliet tragic romance.

But Hollywood chose to do something more -- to translate its beauty and violence and compassion and power into genuine cinema language -- and we can all be glad.

Superb aerial shots looking down into New York's canyons open the film and set the stage for an extraordinary production.

Faithfully sticking to the play, the film is witty, biting, entertaining and sentimental, too.

What makes it a towering milestone -- especially in the field of cinema -- is the fact that perhaps never have music, dance and drama been merged as effectively or have art and realism been blended more excitingly.

All technicalities were met in flawless fashion and West Side Story emerges more memorable than ever.

There is beautiful and in some cases clever music, superb acting, photography, special effects, settings and wardrobe almost beyond compare.

It's a cleverly stylized and dramatized depiction of a bloody story which probably will appeal most to those who like lengthy musicals, and to the younger generation who are fascinated by "rumbles." Their elders may find it depressing.

Robbins' choreography profits most from Panavision. Spectacular on stage, his sequences are nothing short of electric on film.

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West Side Story review – Spielberg’s triumphantly hyperreal remake

Stunning recreations of the original film’s New York retain the songs and the dancing in a re-telling that will leave you gasping

S teven Spielberg’s West Side Story 2.0 is an ecstatic act of ancestor-worship: a vividly dreamed, cunningly modified and visually staggering revival. No one but Spielberg could have brought it off, creating a movie in which Leonard Bernstein’s score and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics blaze out with fierce new clarity. Spielberg retains María’s narcissistic I Feel Pretty, transplanted from the bridal workshop to a fancy department store where she’s working as a cleaner. This was the number whose Cowardian skittishness Sondheim himself had second thoughts about. But its confection is entirely palatable.

Spielberg has worked with screenwriter Tony Kushner to change the original book by Arthur Laurents, tilting the emphases and giving new stretches of unsubtitled Spanish dialogue and keeping much of the visual idiom of Jerome Robbins’s stylised choreography. This new West Side Story isn’t updated historically yet neither is it a shot-for-shot remake. But daringly, and maybe almost defiantly, it reproduces the original period ambience with stunning digital fabrications of late-50s New York whose authentic detail co-exists with an unashamed theatricality. On the big screen the effect is hyperreal, as if you have somehow hallucinated your way back 70 years on to both the musical stage for the Broadway opening night and also the city streets outside. I couldn’t watch without gasping those opening “prologue” sequences, in which the camera drifts over the slum-clearance wreckage of Manhattan’s postwar Upper West Side, as if in a sci-fi mystery, with strangely familiar musical phrases echoing up from below ground.

The original story was famously based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but with one very important difference. The Jets and the Sharks, unlike the Montagues and Capulets, are not “both alike in dignity”: the Jets are white, with a structural advantage over their Puerto Rican enemies, and this production, with consistent Latino casting for the Sharks, points up the white cops’ tribal similarity to the Jets, in a kind of co-belligerent neutrality. Corey Stoll plays Lieutenant Schrank and Brian D’Arcy James is the sweaty, resentful Officer Krupke.

The scene is the rubble of the Upper West Side in 1958 where decaying tenements are being bulldozed for the fancy new Lincoln Center. Ansel Elgort plays Tony, a young white man and ex-Jets member who this movie imagines to be just out of prison for an act of violence which has scared him away from getting involved in gang warfare. Now he’s staying at Doc’s drugstore: or rather his landlady is the widow of the late Doc, Valentina, marvellously played by Rita Moreno, who was Anita in the original 1961 version. This was an Anglo-Latino love match, the future that Tony and María should have had.

Tony’s best buddy is Jets’ leader Riff, played by Mike Faist, whose sharp face has the wizened, coarsened look of someone much older, and Riff desperately wants to enlist Tony for a new planned rumble with the Puerto Rican Sharks who are encroaching on their territory in growing numbers, and this new movie lets us see that queasy subtext of Protestant distaste for Catholic growth-rate. The Sharks’ leader Bernardo (David Alvarez) has a fiery relationship with his girlfriend Anita (an exuberant, smart Ariana DeBose) and oppressively protective of his sister Maria: a gentle, wistful performance from newcomer Rachel Zegler. Tony and Maria meet and fall for each other at a local dance and their transgressive affair for a microsecond shows everyone the possibility of a modern, non-sectarian future – but ends in violence. And in fact, the tragedy of errors that concludes the drama is more plausibly plotted than anything Shakespeare wrote.

Elgort and Zegler are a more real pair than Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood in the original: but they have the same fundamental innocence and quaint pre-pop, pre-youth-culture 60s unworldliness. West Side Story is contrived, certainly, a hothouse flower of musical theatre, and Spielberg quite rightly doesn’t try hiding any of those stage origins. His mastery of technique is thrilling; I gave my heart to this poignant American fairytale of doomed love.

• West Side Story (2021)
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At the beginning of Steven Spielberg’s brilliantly directed “West Side Story,” the Jets whistle, snap their fingers and pirouette around New York, a city that looms and sprawls but is still nowhere big enough to contain their brash, combative energy. So far, so familiar. But anyone who grew up on Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 Oscar-winning smash — and who has memorized every chord of Leonard Bernstein’s music, every step of Robbins’ choreography and every lyric composed by (sob) the late, great Stephen Sondheim — will immediately spot some differences. (And I don’t just mean the regrettable absence of the word “Fox” from the 20th Century Studios logo.)

Rather than opening with lofty aerial views of Manhattan, Spielberg’s movie starts off lower to the ground, snaking its way through the brick-strewn rubble of a San Juan Hill tenement that’s been demolished to make way for Lincoln Center. A patina of 1950s social realism has long been one of this musical’s selling points, and it gets an extra layer of grit here in the barbed wire and twisted metal of Adam Stockhausen’s production design, plus the exuberant athleticism of the cinematography (by Spielberg’s longtime lens man, Janusz Kaminski). Once the dancing begins, the camera doesn’t seem to be recording so much as propelling the performers’ movements, matching and even amplifying their mix of balletic grace and street-gang aggression.

And such aggression! Led by Riff (Mike Faist, spectacular in his wiry physicality and wise-guy attitude), the Jets swiftly desecrate a local mural of the Puerto Rican flag, provoking a startlingly brutal clash with their archrivals, the Sharks. The racial divisions feel especially fierce, not just because of the slurs flying back and forth but because, in contrast with the earlier film, the Sharks are actually played by Latino actors (none more arresting than David Alvarez as their swaggering leader, Bernardo). I don’t mean to single out this casting as some sort of accomplishment: It’s 2021, for heaven’s sake. But it’s also, of course, the ’50s. And the obvious care taken by Spielberg and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner — here wringing an entirely new script from Arthur Laurents’ original book — speaks to the cultural firestorms that “West Side Story” seems to ignite with each new iteration (including Ivo Van Hove’s very different, divisive 2020 Broadway revival ).

Covering the issues, politics, culture and lifestyle of the Latino community in L.A., California and beyond.

As with most updates of beloved material, the mere fact of this movie’s existence has provoked its fair share of indignation. Some of the criticism has focused on Hollywood’s remake addiction, but more of it has to do with the troubling, complicated legacy of “West Side Story” itself, whose mashup of broad archetypes (ah, angry, impetuous youth!) and reductive ethnic stereotypes has long been a source of contention. There may be no greater emblem of the show’s inextricable triumphs and failures than Rita Moreno’s 1961 performance as Anita, a role for which she was forced to wear brown makeup — a singular degradation for the lone Puerto Rican member of the cast — and for which she won a history-making Academy Award for supporting actress.

Moreno, now 89, is an executive producer on the new movie and also plays the crucial role of Valentina, standing in for the original’s soda-shop owner, Doc. In a role shrewdly recast as Puerto Rican, she helps counterbalance some of the white authority figures — including Brian d’Arcy James as the beleaguered Officer Krupke and Corey Stoll as his smug superior, Lt. Schrank — whose break-it-up attitude inevitably skews in favor of the white Jets. Valentina’s tough, affectionate guidance of our romantic hero, Tony (Ansel Elgort), adds a balancing note of cross-cultural friendship to the movie’s seething racial cauldron. And Moreno’s presence, which includes a sweetly quavering performance of “Somewhere,” functions as a poignant good-luck charm in a movie that positions itself as both glorious throwback and gentle corrective.

Some of the most crucial and engaging reparative work is done in the apartment where Bernardo bickers with his younger sister, María (outstanding newcomer Rachel Zegler), and his girlfriend, Anita (Ariana DeBose), in a free-flowing mix of English and deliberately unsubtitled Spanish. The point is to assert not only the ubiquity of Spanish as an American language but also to heighten the timeless, universal qualities of the story; Bernardo’s smothering protectiveness, María’s spirited defiance and Anita’s street-wise exasperation require no translation, especially since Alvarez, Zegler and especially DeBose give such vibrant, emotionally immediate performances.

Spielberg’s filmmaking, of course, is another language intuitive enough for any moviegoer to understand. It may be worth noting that America’s most popular director has never before directed an entry in what was once America’s most popular film genre, but that fact almost pales into insignificance given his instinctive sense of visual rhythm, proportion and kinetic flow, his gift for orchestrating moments that trigger near-Pavlovian bursts of feeling. When the Sharks and Jets converge at a school gym for a little mambo-a-mambo, the dazzling swirls of color (supplied in part by Paul Tazewell’s costumes) and the unifying sweep of the camera produce a special kind of rapture. The collision of bodies — and of tempers, cultures, identities — yanks you into the moment with an almost physical force.

That dance serves as the backdrop for the first glimmers of romance and early rumors of a rumble. Enter Riff’s best friend, Tony, the peace-loving Romeo who locks eyes with María’s fresh-faced Juliet, cementing this movie’s ill-fated love story and setting its climactic waves of violence in motion. Elgort can move gracefully through the frame, as he demonstrated in “Baby Driver,” and he croons his way pleasantly if not too forcefully through Tony’s big early numbers like “Something’s Coming” and “María.” Still, there’s often a woodenness to the actor’s expressions, an excess of soft-eyed brooding, that doesn’t fully overcome Tony’s fundamental drippiness as a character. When Anita urges María to “forget that boy and find another,” you may find yourself nodding in agreement.

The superb Zegler, by contrast, brings a quality of luminous intelligence even to María’s wide-eyed naiveté; her clear-as-a-bell singing and deft timing serve her well amid the ebullient comedy of “I Feel Pretty,” and also amid the soaring passions of “Tonight,” in which a fire escape becomes Tony and María’s romantic refuge. That scene has long been one of “West Side Story’s” emotional (and literal) high points, and Spielberg’s staging and blocking — aided here, as ever, by Justin Peck’s sterling choreography — are a particular model of how dynamic camera movement, strategic closeups and physically nimble performers can breathe fresh life into even the oldest chestnut.

Directing a musical — and a version of a musical he’s loved since childhood — has shaken something loose in Spielberg. Why “West Side Story,” why now? To watch this movie is to see and hear the answer. With every number you can feel him playfully challenging Wise and Robbins’ interpretation and also, crucially, challenging himself, whether he’s having Tony, Riff and their friends play an acrobatic game of keep-away with a gun during the tense, disquieting “Cool” or staging the riotous comic relief of “Gee, Officer Krupke!” in a police department station house, all the better for the Jets to thumb their noses at authority. (Among the other young actors distinguishing themselves here are Josh Andrés Rivera as María’s jilted boyfriend, Chino, and Iris Menas as the Jets’ tagalong-turned-informant, Anybodys.)

It reaches an apotheosis with “America,” in which Anita and Bernardo spar with quick-witted ingenuity over the joys and perils of assimilation — a journey that rightly progresses from a domestic squabble to a traffic-stopping dance of almost kaleidoscopic beauty. Therein lies the spry paradox of this “West Side Story,” which knows that in sensitive enough hands, close-to-the-bone realism and bright-hued formalism can be flip sides of the same stylistic coin. Spielberg’s movie may be rougher, grittier, more lived-in and, in terms of cultural representation, more truthful than its 1961 cinematic incarnation. But it is also more unabashedly classical, more radiantly stylized, than just about anything a major American studio has released in years.

That includes some of Spielberg’s own movies. Over the past decade or more he has undertaken a doggedly optimistic search for what you might call the soul of America — a quest that has reliably led him into the past, into the Watergate-era newsrooms of “The Post” and the Civil War-era congressional chambers of “Lincoln” (another Kushner-Spielberg collaboration). “West Side Story” belongs more in their company than you might think; it isn’t historical drama, but there’s no overlooking its place in history, or its alternately confusing and clarifying vision of how divisions of age, race and gender play out in the body politic. Spielberg, attentive as he is to the quality of the singing and dancing, operates from the conviction that this Broadway-to-Hollywood warhorse still has something important to say.

And conviction — a commitment that can’t be faked, and a quality by which every musical lives or dies — is what underpins, energizes and ultimately justifies this “West Side Story.” By the end, I was less moved by Tony and María’s tragic love story, which veers expectedly between sweetness and creakiness, than I was by Spielberg’s sheer faith in the transporting power of movies. He believes there’s still a place for them, and for us.

‘West Side Story’

Rating: PG-13, for some strong violence, thematic content, suggestive material and brief smoking Running time: 2 hours, 36 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 10 in general release

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‘West Side Story’ Review: Steven Spielberg’s First Musical Is a Revelatory Riff on a Beloved Classic

David ehrlich.

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Steven Spielberg had never directed a musical prior to his bold and occasionally breathtaking new adaptation of “ West Side Story ,” and yet it sometimes feels as if they’re the only kind of movie that he’s ever made. Spielberg’s images so fluidly dance with the sound around them that it can be impossible to separate the two. Indiana Jones might not burst into song during “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but his adventures are staged with a dance-like expressionism that evokes “An American in Paris” just as much as it does an archaeologist in Peru. “The Adventures of Tintin” might not be the kind of animated spectacle that people tend to associate with Disney princesses, but the Mouse House has never drawn anything that moves with such kinetic rhythm and meter. His take on “The Color Purple” was so theatrical that it inspired a great Broadway show, his “Catch Me if You Can” so melodic that it inspired a bad one, and his “Jurassic Park” so genetically linked to its John Williams score that it provided theme music for an entire geologic period.

In other words, the guy has been rehearsing for this moment since “West Side Story” was first adapted for the big screen in 1961. Now that he’s taken his own swing at the Sondheim and Bernstein classic more than half a century later, it’s poignant and perversely thrilling to find that his full-throated riff on one of the greatest musicals ever staged often feels like just another Steven Spielberg movie; a late period Steven Spielberg movie that’s been desaturated within an inch of its life and sealed inside a bubble of digital plastic, but a Steven Spielberg movie all the same.

That might have been a problem — or at least more of a backhanded compliment — if the source material were any less magical, but these enduringly strong Shakespearean bones practically begged a modern filmmaker to lend them some new muscles. Spielberg was happy to oblige, honoring a sacred piece of musical theater by flexing all over it with some of the most exhilarating setpieces he’s ever shot. It takes chutzpah to reimagine a ditty like “Cool” as the backdrop for a dance fight on par with anything in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and vision to make a tired song like “I Feel Pretty” seem essential to Maria (in your face, Ivo van Hove!), and Tony Kushner ’s revelatory script tees Spielberg up for opportunities like that at every turn.

The same reverently aggressive approach to adaptation that allows for such discrete moments of genius also strengthens the musical as a whole, offering this “West Side Story” a richer sense of context than any previous version of the show has been allowed before, and not only because Spielberg was able to shoot it on the actual streets of New York with a cast of actual Latinx actors who often speak in actual (unsubtitled) Spanish. But for all of the ways in which Spielberg enhances Broadway, and for all of the ways that Broadway empowers Spielberg in return, crucial aspects of this film are caught in a no man’s land between the two, uncomfortably snagged between stage and screen.

And by “crucial aspects,” I mean “the romance between Tony and Maria that gives the whole thing its narrative purpose.” How strange to see a version of “the greatest love story ever told” that lifts your soul out of your body when its characters just go about their daily lives in the first act, but leaves you with little more than a twitch of emotion when they inevitably die in the second.

When this “West Side Story” is good, though, it can be staggeringly great. That greatness is on full display from the opening shot, which tweaks the inimitably wordless prologue of the 1961 film just enough to justify doing it all over again. The very first thing we see is something that would have been impossible for the previous version, and not only because it’s part of a computer-assisted aerial shot that zips around the rubble of the Upper West Side neighborhoods that Robert Moses created in order to build Lincoln Center, but rather because the camera leaps over a mock-up of the completed facility as it looked when it opened in 1962. The message is clear: This is the “West Side Story” you know and love, only revitalized by a distance that Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins never got to have from it.

That aura — young and alive without leaning on nostalgia or feeling like a Gap ad — only intensifies as the Jets and Sharks begin to square off in the ruins of the home that had been promised to them both. The dance combat that Justin Peck choreographed in tribute to Robbins is no less graceful or expressive than it was before, but the fighting is no longer purely symbolic. Kids get hurt. Heads are busted. A nail gets pounded through someone’s ear. When the Jets stride over the rocks in formation, they’re as scary as a phalanx of finger-snapping white teenagers could ever be. Much of the credit for that belongs to the incredible Mike Faist , who plays gang leader Riff like a raspy Proud Boy John Mulaney; if Riff sees the post-war influx of Puerto Ricans as some kind of existential threat, that’s only because his parents didn’t leave him anything else to remember them by.

The Sharks are more broadly sympathetic, as their hopes for building a better life were disrupted by racism, nativism, the poverty that both of those things engender, and that which Moses’ city planning helped to consecrate. In order to more squarely confront those challenges, Shark leader Bernardo has been reimagined with a newfound pugilistic streak (he’s played with sweetly brooding intensity by David Alvarez, whose performance is another testament to Spielberg’s “my name is the only one that has to be on the poster” swagger and how it frees him to cast the best people you’ve never heard of for even the biggest parts). Long before two star-crossed lovers spot each other across a crowded gym, the needlessness of their impending tragedy is already writ large. They can rumble all they want, but the wrecking balls are coming no matter what.

That should be enough to add an extra charge to the 24-hour love story that develops between Tony and Maria, and it is at first. So tainted by his personal behavior that “The Goldfinch” no longer qualifies as his worst offense, Ansel Elgort plays Tony as a mix of old Hollywood stoicism and new Hollywood scandal. His lovely singing voice distracts from the woodenness of his dialogue performance, and he cuts a handsome matinee idol figure even if the unreal softness of Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography — at once both denatured and dreamlike — often makes it look as if Elgort is trying to disguise himself as a young CGI Jeff Bridges. Rachel Zegler ’s Maria… perfect, no notes, Natalie Wood was an icon but there’s simply no competing with a New York City theater kid. If Spielberg’s restless staging of “Tonight” distracts from Zegler’s talent, the sequence in which Tony and Maria fall in love at first sight at the neighborhood social is so propulsively enchanted that you almost feel like they might be able to stop time, leave town, and cut straight to “Somewhere.”

Almost all of the musical numbers are similarly intoxicating, with superfluous bits like “Gee, Officer Krupke” redeemed by character-driven staging, and the already-showstopping “America” erupting into a neighborhood-wide battle between perseverance and retreat. Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita (an incendiary Ariana DeBose ) is the most vocal cheerleader in defense of the Puerto Rican community digging in their heels, and few of this movie’s dramatic scenes are more powerful than the climactic encounter in which Anita tries to reconcile her hope with her heartache.

Rita Moreno should be proud of how DeBose inhabits the role she once made iconic, and I’m sure that she is — the 89-year-old legend isn’t only an executive producer on this film, she’s an on-screen link to its past. Kushner has killed off the kindly gringo pharmacist Doc and replaced him with his widow Valentina, who Moreno commands into a living emblem of the harmony that once seemed possible. But every minute spent on this new character relegates Tony and Maria further into the background, which is especially damaging in a film that strives for expressionistic realism even while asking us to believe that two teenagers might see each other, get married as part of a boring date at the Cloisters, and then have sex after one of them murders the other’s brother — all in the span of a single day.

These characters have always been overshadowed by the show’s more colorful supporting roles, as the leads of a musical often are, but even in the abridged context of a Romeo & Juliet story, there simply isn’t enough desire between them to sell their most drastic choices. It’s tempting to blame Elgort for that, but Kushner bears much of the responsibility; in his eagerness to articulate the symbolic weight of Tony and Maria’s forbidden love, his script loses their impulsive passion. Understandable as that tradeoff may be, the decision to let Valentina belt “Somewhere” as an elegiac riff on “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” scores a thimble of poignancy in exchange for a mountain of pain. It dulls the impact of the ending in ways that not even Kushner’s most brilliant gambits (e.g. moving “I Feel Pretty” until the last possible moment) can fully redeem, and allows Spielberg to teeter away from musicality and into melodrama at the precise moment that he needs to strike a balance between the two.

But if “West Side Story” begins to fall apart after the big rumble, the flubbed ending only makes this musical feel even more of a piece with Spielberg’s other films. The familiar activeness of his camera is as restored by “West Side Story” as “West Side Story” is by it in return, Spielberg and Kushner adding dimension upon dimension to an American classic until its tragedy steeps into silence. It’s a wonderful musical, and an unabashed Steven Spielberg movie. And the moments in which it most comfortably allows itself to be both of those things at once leave you convinced that some harmonies are worth waiting for, even if it seems like they’ve been always been around the corner and whistling down the river.

20th Century Studies will release “West Side Story” in theaters on Friday, December 10.

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‘West Side Story’ Review: Steven Spielberg Gives the Musical Classic a Gritty, Rousing Upgrade

The director makes the 1957 musical his own and stays reverently true to what generations have loved about it. But he can't solve its last-act problems.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Steven Spielberg ’s “ West Side Story ” has a brash effervescence. You can feel the joy he got out of making it, and the kick is infectious. Directing his first musical, Spielberg moves into the big roomy space of a Broadway-meets-Hollywood classic, rearranges the furniture (the film’s screenwriter, Tony Kushner, has spiced up the dialogue and tossed out the most cringe-worthy knickknacks), and gives it all a fresh coat of desaturated, bombed-out-city-block, gritty-as-reality paint. He makes it his own. At the same time, Spielberg stays reverently true to what generations have loved about “West Side Story”: the swoon factor, the yearning beauty of those songs, the hypnotic jackknife ballet of ’50s delinquents dancing out their aggression on the New York streets. There are scenes in Spielberg’s version that will melt you, scenes that will make your pulse race, and scenes where you simply sit back and revel in the big-spirited grandeur of it all.

The setting is the Upper West Side in 1957, something the film lets us know with a wink that nods to how Spielberg and Kushner are going to tinker with the material. Robert Wise’s 1961 screen version opened with that God’s-eye panoramic sweep of Manhattan, but Spielberg’s opens with a panorama of rubble, the camera swooping over what looks like a war zone, which turns out to be the wrecking-ball “slum clearance” that will make way for the construction of Lincoln Center. The turf war between the film’s white and Puerto Rican teenage gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, now has a bigger-picture backdrop. Both are being crushed by gentrification — which is to say, part of their tragic folly is they never realize they’re in the same boat.

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The Jets start off slathering paint on the mural of a Puerto Rican flag. As the boys move and groove to their inner thug, singing “Jet Song” (“When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way…” ), Justin Peck’s choreography plays off the hypnotic, limb-thrusting, rhythm-of-the-city athleticism of Jerome Robbins’ original dances, and Spielberg, working with his dynamic cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, has the camera moves to match. We seem to be gliding through the streets right along with the Jets, channeling their reckless exhilaration, and the ’50s-punk acting has been liberated so that the snarls and struts aren’t trapped in that bubble of old-movie corniness. (The 1961 “West Side Story” felt dated…in 1961.) As Riff, the leader of the Jets, Mike Faist has a lean sociopathic squint, and David Alvarez plays Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, with a mean swagger of self-righteousness. Bernardo is now a boxer (fighting is what gets him high), and his problem is that he has never embraced his life in America. The racial antagonism he faces each day has singed his soul, and Alvarez infuses the character with a dark-side-of-rock-star bravado.

Of course, at the center of “West Side Story” is something — maybe I should say “Somewhere” — softer and more tenderly lyrical. And Spielberg has done an ace job of casting his two romantic leads. Before now, I’ve never been a fan of Ansel Elgort . One’s first thought about him may be that he’s Ashton Kutcher without irony ­— and that you miss the irony. But in “West Side Story,” Elgort, with lips like Brando’s, has a brooding heart and personality that pop, and he’s a wonderfully expressive crooner. Tony, updated by Kushner’s script, has now spent a year in prison for nearly punching someone to death, and Elgort, speaking in understated street vowels, strikes just the right balance of sweetness and danger. At the high-school dance, which Spielberg stages with a hip-twirling electricity that rivals the big school dance number in “Grease” (yes, that’s a compliment), Tony has his first glimpse of Maria ( Rachel Zegler ), the girl who will burn down what’s left of his gang loyalty, and she has her first glimpse of him, and…well, it could all spearhead a revival of love at first sight. Singing “Maria,” his voice soaring into the upper register, Tony is transported, and so are we.

In the Oscar-winning 1961 film version, adapted from the 1957 Broadway show, Maria was mostly a perky, saintly innocent, but here she gets a spitfire upgrade. The charismatic newcomer Rachel Zegler gives her a touch of fierceness and a boldly chiseled stare of longing. When Maria and Tony sing “Tonight,” the most transcendent song in “West Side Story,” they’re on the fire escape, in vintage Romeo-and-Juliet-of-the-tenement fashion, and Spielberg stages their duet with an intimate choreographed flow, so that the words seem to spin and dance. Their love is an oasis of hope in the concrete jungle. And that’s an emblem of how “West Side Story” now lands in the larger movie world: as a heady nostalgic crowd-pleaser that offers the rare alternative to both blockbuster overkill and indie angst. Can the Oscars possibly say no to it?

That said, I’ve always had a love/gripe relationship with “West Side Story.” It has what may be the greatest set of songs in any American musical, composed by Leonard Bernstein as if he were the magic link between Richard Rodgers and Brian Wilson. The lyrics, by the late Stephen Sondheim, are as peerlessly playful as they are poetic, and the choreography remains a marvel of expressionistic street movement.

For me, though, the original film version goes off the rails during the big rumble. I could never buy that Richard Beymer’s Tony would pick up that switchblade and do what he does. And Natalie Wood’s Maria gets angry at Tony for killing her brother for about five seconds, before she seems to forget all about it. There’s an unconscious racist element to that (quite apart from the regrettable decision to cast Natalie Wood as the Latina Maria), and it gums up the emotional flow. The unintentional subtext seems to be: Bernardo was a Latino hothead, so his death doesn’t even matter to Maria all that much. “West Side Story” may owe its story to Shakespeare, but that doesn’t mean it parses. The last act is less a romantic tragedy than a belabored gang-war scramble that turns into a tidy plea for tolerance.

And those are problems I don’t think the new version completely solves. Given how Kushner has retooled and enriched the script — Tony and Maria’s romance, for instance, isn’t the melodramatic secret it was before — I was surprised to see that the rumble climaxes in the same old hyped-up but unconvincing way. (No, even with Tony having been in prison, I didn’t buy it.) And once that happens, you feel an energy leak out of the movie.

Up till then, “West Side Story” is a parade of delights. Spielberg has staged “America,” with its rousing mock patriotic tongue-twisting lyrics, as a swirling, roving block party of triumphant feminine bluster. “One Hand, One Heart” is now a gorgeous hymn, shot through stained-glass sunlight, and where “Gee, Officer Krupke,” set inside a police station, is the number you’d think would have dated most, it’s actually a witty wonder, since the Jets are using the new furrowed-brow therapeutic “understanding” of delinquency to defend themselves, and the joke is that they know it’s all bunk. Ariana DeBose makes Anita a radiant force of nature, and the legendary Rita Moreno , who played Anita in the original film, is on hand as Valentina, widow of the soda-shop owner Doc. The 89-year-old Moreno, with a no-frills luminosity, steals every scene she’s in, and her rendition of “Somewhere” is a highlight. The whole film feels as contemporary as it needs to, since topicality is baked into its tribal dance of racial animosity. “West Side Story” is a bursting, live-wire pageant of a movie. I just wish it had a final act that soared instead of lumbering to what feels like an overly determined message-movie landing.

Reviewed at SVA Theater, New York, Nov. 29, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 146 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Studios, Walt Disney Company release of a 20th Century Studios, Amblin Entertainment production, in association with TSG Entertainment. Producers: Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Kevin McCollum. Executive producers: Tony Kushner, Daniel Lupi, Rita Moreno, Adam Somner.
• Crew: Director: Steven Spielberg. Screenplay: Tony Kushner. Camera: Janusz Kaminski. Editors: Sarah Brosher, Michael Kahn. Music: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim.
• With: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Rita Moreno, Corey Stoll, Brian d’Arcy James, Josh Andrés Rivera, Iris Menas.

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West Side Story

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Time Out says

How do you outdo a classic? Steven Spielberg’s live-wire new version of the timeless musical pulls it off in style

If, like me, you tend to think West Side Story is just a lot of blokes in vests climbing over fences, interrupted by the odd song about rumbles, Steven Spielberg would like a word, daddy-o. His breathtaking, muscular and terrifically cast new version circles back to the original Broadway musical in its smart structural tweaks, nodding respectfully to the 1961 movie by recasting Rita Moreno, while supercharging an age-old story with new urgency. How do you outdo a film that won ten Oscars? Here’s how.  There’s a substrata of genius-level artists at work here: from Spielberg himself, who delivers his best film in nearly 20 years, to the late, great Stephen Sondheim (lyricist), Jerome Robbins (choreographer), Leonard Bernstein (composer) and William Shakespeare (the ideas guy) – and you can really feel it.

The songs are still great, Bernstein’s brassy score is the sound of New York in flux , and the story remains sturdy and deceptively simple.

As is traditional, two gangs – the Caucasian Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks – and their pair of star-crossed lovers, Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (newcomer Rachel Zegler), scrap, dance, romance, and eventually melt down altogether across a rumble-strewn corner of the Big Apple. The respective gang leaders, Riff and Bernardo (Mike Faist and David Alvarez, both terrific), cajole their crews towards a dust-up that will decide ownership of the turf once and for all. It will, of course, end in tears.

There’s a substrata of genius-level artists at work here and you can feel it

But Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (a Pulitzer prize winner for  Angels in America ) untap fierce new resonance in the story’s treatment of immigration, race, gender, masculinity and gentrification. An early encounter with the neighbourhood’s bigoted detective, Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll), a kind of racist Officer Dibble, sets the tone: the hoodrat Jets are basically ethnically cleansing the Puerto Rican barrios, and the cops have their backs.

It echoes throughout, in particular during a staging of centrepiece migrant anthem ‘America’, blisteringly staged by choreographer Justin Peck, that doesn’t bother to hide its rage amid the hypnotic swirl of flowing skirts.

Other characters are given new dimensions here, including the spurned and vengeful Chino and most significantly, wannabe Jet Anybodys, played by non-binary actor Iris Menas. A moving moment of acceptance into the gang is played to perfection. So what are the flaws? Well, as always with a source story in which Tybalt is far more badass than Romeo, the lovie-dovie central couple feel underpowered compared with the live wires around them. For all the latters’ charms, Anita and Bernardo are more interesting characters than the thinly-sketched Tony and Maria, and you’d be forgiven for wanting to spend more time with them. You need a pretty high tolerance for finger-snapping, too.

Beyond that, everything sings. There’s a touch of diet Brando about Elgort’s reformed bad boy-turned-lovebird, but Zegler brings a lovely brand of innocence and conviction to Maria. And don’t be surprised to see Moreno (or for that matter Spielberg) winning another Oscar. Just another nine more needed...

In UK and US cinemas Dec 10. In Australia Dec 26, and Hong Kong and Singapore Jan 6.

Cast and crew

• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Screenwriter: Tony Kushner
• Ansel Elgort
• Rita Moreno
• Ariana DeBose
• Rachel Zegler

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West Side Story review: Steven Spielberg pulls off the near-impossible in glowing remake

Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it.

In a world where Batman seems to reboot biannually and even Space Jam gets a sequel , it helps to know that some things are still sacred. Like West Side Story , the 1957 stage musical whose definitive 1961 movie version has remained rightfully untouched for 60 years ( at least on screen ). The EGOT slurry of names brave enough to take it on in 2021 — Steven Spielberg directs, Tony Kushner penned the script, and Tony winner Justin Peck has tweaked the original Jerome Robbins choreography — may not be a match for the 20th-century icons who created it, but who is? More importantly, they're wise enough to stay largely faithful to Arthur Laurents' book, Leonard Bernstein's music, and Stephen Sondheim's sublime lyrics, with just a few well-gauged updates.

They also make it look great: West Side (in theaters Dec. 10) opens on a gleaming 1950s New York City, god's-eye cameras swooping and gliding over the vast construction site that will soon become Lincoln Center. Until then, its alleys and empty lots belong to the world's premier juvenile delinquents; the Sharks are Puerto Rican, the Jets mostly Polish and Irish, and these few square blocks are the nexus of everything they care about. Never mind that change is coming, along with the new buildings — the Jets might be "the last of the can't-make-it Caucasians" that gentrification is about to erase, as a gruff detective played by Corey Stoll is happy to inform them, but until then, they'll fight with fists and knives to defend their territory from the brown-skinned interlopers they don't consider fellow citizens, no matter what geography books say.

The Sharks have their leader, a pugnacious part-time boxer named Bernardo (David Alvarez), and the Jets have Riff (Mike Faist), but the latter's true north star is Tony ( Ansel Elgort ), recently released from prison for assault and eager to turn over a newer, gentler leaf. He's committed to being a model parolee, stocking the shelves for widowed drug-store owner Valentina by day (the undimmable Rita Moreno , a joyful holdover from the original cast), and keeping a bedroll in her basement. If only Riff didn't work so hard to lure Tony to the local dance, and if only his eyes didn't lock with Bernardo's baby sister Maria ( Rachel Zegler ) across a crowded gymnasium the moment he walked in.

Their connection is immediate and immediately trouble; a stolen kiss under the bleachers is enough to make Bernardo demand a rumble and set the plot machinery in motion. Anyone who's ever hummed "Gee, Officer Krupke" and "I Feel Pretty" — the soundtrack, astoundingly, is still the longest-running no. 1 album of all time — or read a little bit of Shakespeare will know the gist of what comes next. What's surprising is how well Spielberg and Kushner massage the text to make it fresh without losing essential fidelity to the story: A trans character (Iris Menas) comes more explicitly into focus, and the teenage hooligans, beneath their ducktailed hair and rolled cuffs, pulse with a modernity that feels urgent and real. It's still the '50s, but sex and danger are more than implied here, and so are the realities of race and class.

A substantial chunk of the dialogue is also delivered in Spanish without subtitles or translation, which some viewers will undoubtedly make noise about. But it sits right with the update; if the Babel tower that Manhattan is built on isn't all-American, what is? What still feels classic is the setting — New York as a neighborly place of steam grates, corner bodegas, and laundry lines strung between tenements — and the cast. Zegler and Elgort don't really dance, but their young lovers are the luminous center of the story, with voices like bells and faces so pretty it almost hurts to look at them directly. (Though Spielberg does repeatedly, in swooning closeups and extravagantly wide-scoped musical numbers.)

The best acting often happens off to the side: The wiry, fine-boned Faist, best known for his Tony-nominated turn on Broadway in Dear Evan Hansen , is a standout, and so is Hamilton 's Ariana DeBose, who has the unenviable task of appearing in the role Moreno originated on-screen and famously won an Oscar for. Her Anita is a pure dopamine rush on the dance floor and a small revelation off of it, dimensional and fiercely tender beneath her brash exterior. (When she and Moreno share a brief late scene, they're both electric.) Whether any of those factors alone justify a remake, it's hard to say; necessity is in the eye of the beholder, or maybe just the demographic that will be coming to all of this new. No matter how poignant or pointedly reworked, West Side Story is still high Hollywood fantasy: Where else outside of a sound stage can turf wars be resolved with a warbled melody and a kick-ball-change? But it feels like a rare achievement to even attempt to scale the unscalable and still, after more than half a century, be able to make it sing. Grade: A–

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