Revenge. That is
the underlying sentiment of the movie. From Sultana Daaku to Ehsaan
Quereshi to Sultan Singh and to Sardar Khan, all are hell-bent on avenging
something or the other. And other times they would be busy serenading some
girl, end up marrying her, have fun and procreate. In between, you have a
liberal dose of knives, country made pistols, bullets and crude bombs and
suddenly the movie becomes all explosive.
Add to this cuss words after every few sentences and voila, you have the
audience in splits.
Maybe
that was being a little too strict with the movie. To be honest, the movie does
entertain you. And does that to you for the better part of the almost 3 hour
long run. But the kind of entertainment that the movie has to rely on is
certainly too crass and obtuse for a level-headed person. Notwithstanding, the
movie has certain scenes which have been played brilliantly by the actors and
are adequately backed by opportune and perfectly timed songs.
Gangs of Wasseypur as the name suggests is a
movie on gangs of Wasseypur. Wasseypur is this small town next to the coal-rich
town of Dhanbad. Most of the first half of the first part of this movie is
devoted to the history behind these gang wars and in building a family tree. It
gets so confusing that you have no option but to only watch the movie with
intense concentration. There are way too many characters. All of them get
married. And they beget children. Who in turn get married and themselves have
children. They pass on the legacy of their age-old revenge from generation to
generation and you are forced to memorise the set of characters in one
generation before the next generation turns up. The story begins in the
backdrop of a feud between one gangster from the Quereshi caste, Sultana Daaku
and a Pathan, Khan. The Pathan develops another enemy, Ramadhir Singh. All this
has the coal mining belt of Bihar (now Jharkhand) in centre focus. From coal
wars to petrol wars to fish wars, you have it all.
But
the superb acting of the cast is what impresses you apart from the
ability to keep you at the edge of your seat for the better part that is. Risha
Chadda, who plays Sardar Khan’s wife, plays the role of an Indian wife with a twist.
She is happily married, keeps getting pregnant and repects her husband. But
that does not keep her from going to the house of a prostitute with a knife and
make her husband flee from there. The stunning composure and bearing that she
maintains throughout the film is remarkable. So also Manoj Bajpai, aka
Sardar Khan, plays a role of an orphaned-boy-turned-small-time-criminal-turned-gangster
and plays it a class-apart performance. So also do most of the other actors.
The
movie though has been made with no sense of time or duration. It drags on a lot
and you realise that the scenes have been added simply to stretch it to 5 hours
or so. The first half of the movie could easily have been wrapped up in around
90 minutes. The songs do keep you plugged in and a few of them are made
intentionally with double meanings. This seems to have become a signature
recipe for making the audience laugh. It’s a movie which is bad, gross,
downright indecent, but yet is entertaining, funny and certainly unavoidable.
Ratings - ***1/2
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