"Gangster" is not really a film about homicidal crime. Nor is
it a film that dwells stylishly on the glossy exteriors of the high life.
It focuses on the stark interiors of hearts that ruthlessly seek love
in relentlessly self-serving places.
In what is possibly the toughest role written for a female newcomer
Kangna stumbles across a minefield of volatile emotions.
Never shy of exposing the inner-most contours of a lacerated heart
and soul, writer Mahesh Bhatt gives us a love triangle between a girl
on the brink Simran (Kangna), her gangster-lover Daya (Shiney Ahuja)
and the man (Emraan Hashmi) who comes into her life to put balm on her
frayed nerves.
Director Anurag Basu captures the desperate anxieties of the three-way
passion-play with high-voltage sequences each done in lush untried colours
of life's most complicated trajectory.
There is a curvaceous feeling to every swing and swerve of this dramatically
done plot.
The narrative offers surprises all through, with heart-stopping moments
of suspense to punctuate the terse pauses between one dramatic high
and another. It is hard to guess which way the feverish plot would finally
go.
Many moments capturing the girl's anguished dilemma remain clearly
etched as illustrations of director Basu's ability to hold the dramatic
pitch at a high decibel without toppling over the weight of over-statement.
Specially memorable is
the gangster Daya's arrest at the Seoul station. As he shrieks and protests
against the injustice of a justice system that turns his love into a
mocking betrayal - the narrative tells us how difficult it is to take
a moral stand on the question of right and wrong in the matter of love
and morality. The crowded lanes of Seoul and the festive festering decadent
setting add considerably to the intensity level of this high-pitched
drama of love, passion, jealousy, sacrifice and atonement.
Stylishly
shot by cinematographer Bobby Singh, "Gangster" is a gripping
tale where all three principal actors turn in competent performances.
Emraan's strait-laced
supportive-suitor's act is well balanced against Shiney's smouldering
crime-lord turned repentant lover's act.
But the surprise package
is debutante Kangna. From burnt-out alcoholic, to a woman in love and
finally a woman willing to pay the ultimate price for her heart's peace...
the girl goes through the complex gamut of emotions with a perceptible
lack of self-consciousness.
Like Bhatt's early films,
"Gangster" takes us to the darkest recesses of the human heart
where the devil and the saint are slyly affiliated. It is a film that
isn't afraid to let its feelings show.
And that's what makes
it notches above the run-of-the-mill bang-bang-kiss-kiss fare.
So is this really mobster
Abu Salem's love story? By the end of "Gangster" you really
don't care. The characters go far beyond the source material. Definitely
worth watching.