Film: Gumraah
Director: Vardhan Ketkar
Cast: Aditya Roy Kapoor, Mrunal Thakur, Ronit Roy
Rating: 1/5
This is typically what should be termed a ‘narration wali’ picture. Meaning, so plot heavy, that the distance between the script and the screen gets first covered by a smart, performative narrator, who can convince a moneybag to invest in it, based purely on generating supposed excitement, over what happens next!
The one-line idea is simple and straight: “Ek murder. Do suspect. Dono Humshakal. (One murder. Two suspects. Both lookalikes).” The point is: Does it matter?
It does, initially, in the sense that right from the first enactment of the killing, in an elaborate opening sequence — the flashback shows you the actual murderer, at the crime scene, going about the crime itself.
So, this isn’t a murder mystery, that way. But it is, isn’t it? Only the suspects have been narrowed down to two of the same body/face — both being Aditya Roy Kapur.
“Carbon copy,” as a character puts it here, which is a wrong analogy, because carbon copies are of different colours (just saying, yo; when was the last time humans used a carbon for copy anyway!).
One Roy Kapur plays a posh civil engineer from IIT; the other’s a pointless, strange kinda city-slicker, sadak chhaap. I’m, of course, more interested in the Posh Roy Kapur’s girlfriend. Not because of the actor, per se — who’s a newcomer, I suspect, and absolutely fit and fine for the film.
It’s the character’s profession, though — she is a movie critic on the web! As we speak, Quentin Tarantino is making his next film titled The Movie Critic, and we don’t know what it’s about yet. Otherwise, the only time I’ve seen a professional film reviewer on screen is when they’re getting slit wide open, one after another, in R Balki’s quasi slasher pic, Chup (2022).
That said, I’m not sure why this female character for a film critic exists. Let alone whatever she does for a living — that involves watching “foreign films”, and possibly even attracting an aspiring actor for a potential suitor!
She works out of Gurugram. This puts a whole different spin, in my head, to the Posh Roy Kapur character stalking her — literally, every morning, getting into her lift, waiting around until her office floor, and asking her out.
It’s not like the gabru jawans of Gurugram will be inspired by these loafer moves in the movie to turn into stalkers themselves. I see them on Instagram. They already are.
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Only that the person on the screen, taking this persistence offline, is the picture’s handsome hero — a common sight in Hindi pictures of the ’90s; not as much anymore. Either way, the hero expresses his love for the heroine in Mumbai airport’s departure Terminal 2, in what’s supposed to be Delhi’s T3. So at least that’s sorted.
The Pointless Roy Kapur, on the other hand, the ruffian bloke on the streets, looks and feels nothing like the Delhi ka thug. Unlike the actors surrounding him, who’re quite spot-on.
Delhi or ‘North’ gundas and gents alike, you’ll notice, by and large, are quite easy to cast. Maybe because Bollywood’s casting agents do a fair job surveying local talent, and there is a thriving theatre scene as well. Basically, between movies and OTT series, you discover new ‘North’ talents every other day.
I specifically loved the dude in a track-suit, who plays the Punjabi bloke, breaking bones for a living. He’s after the Pointless Roy Kapur character — only that he’s as pointless as the villainous character himself. What matters then?
The motivation for the murder? Nope, how can it? We learn nothing about the fellow, who’s been murdered in the first place — and on whom the film is supposedly centered, I guess! So, then? Well, nothing.
Sit through this nonsense, pretending to be a cop and courtroom drama, plus murder mystery, with two police officers solving one crime, in separate ways. The senior is the dude Ronit Roy, who can make you observe anything seriously on screen, even when precious little makes sense.
At the other end is Mrunal Thakur, in smart Friday-casuals for police wear, cracking an important case, where both suspects have been rounded up, and lodged in the same police station. Now the question is, which of the two morons could’ve murdered an absolute nobody, and why — the audience has already seen the how, and when!
They must wait long enough to wonder why this movie got made and murdered at all. I know why the two Roy Kapurs, with their right and left brains, must’ve picked this script. That ain’t a mystery. On paper, it’s a polar-opposite, lead, double-role. Who doesn’t want a whole picture, whatever its point/purpose, dramatically set around two of themselves.
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That said, this is beyond a clever ‘narration wali picture’, actually. It’s the other one, where everybody involved has already recently seen the film, in Tamil — as usual, the writing outsourced to the South—titled Thadam (2019), that this is an official remake of.
So, of all the subjects in the world, this is where they decided to punt further passion and paisa into, to replay on the big screen. I’m told this version is better than the original. Impossible — no space below.
