To tell you the truth, I have always looked up to Anurag. Though Paanch didn’t impress me much, he ripped it with Black Friday… Dev D was good but then there have been average stuff like No Smoking and Girl in Yellow Boots. According to me, he was at his best in the first half of the gritty Gulaal and that made me his true fan. Gangs of Wasseypur, brings out that brilliance in parts, but just goes on and on and on and still never ends.
This film unfolds like an epic. Starting from the pre-independence era, it tells us the tale of the people of Wasseypur/ Dhanbad – now in Ranchi. The cinematography is spectacular and the storytelling is stellar. Quickly you are introduced with the gangs of Wasseypur and the divide between two sects of Muslims living in that area. The story then shifts to Dhanbad and the coal mafia comes into the picture. As you digest these facts, a revenge drama unfolds with a dash of womanizing and a whole lot of blood.
As I said earlier, the film mostly rides on the brilliance of each and every cast and crew member. The actors do a spot on job, from the briefest cameo to the lead roles. The background score and music score by Sneha Khanwalkar is amazing and suits the film like Ham suits SRK! The dialogues are great, so is the styling, the action choreography, the photography. But even though everyone is hitting a six, you shift in your seat.
The problem is you don’t know where the film is heading. It builds up to being this revenge tale, but never really snowballs into something big. Small skirmishes keep happening, but the tide turns, a few years are knocked off the calendar and again the story delves into trivialities of life. Kashyup takes his time, moves into subplots, dives into mundane pappi jhappi’s and strays away from the plot. The protagonist, in the 4th act of the film forgets that he is driven by revenge and starts selling fish! And this just stretches the film. Some might say it was to reflect life’s mundane nature, but was captured way better and with the correct balance by Tigmanshu in “Pan Singh Tomar”. Anurag just goes over board.
And you come out with this mixed feeling because you know this could have been great. Anurag spoils the excellent individual brilliance of everyone with his romanticism and I am not too excited to see what will happen next. If this were a 3 hour tightly bound film, I think it would have been an epic ( figuratively). Right now, it’s just an epic literally – running over decades, but not creating too much of an impact.
Rating: 6 / 10 ( Damn --- It's sad, coz the acting is so awesome)