REVIEW: Once Upon A Time In Mumbai

BEEN THERE, DON(E) THAT

Romanticising and mythifying gangsters is a peculiar preoccupation in cinema. Hollywood has had its fair share of films eulogising shadowy dons with iconic stars essaying them on screen and participating in their glorification, often glossing over their misdeeds. In Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan's 'angry young man' of the '70s was the underdog anti-hero who broke the law to subvert the system that crushed him and millions like him. Somewhere, this persona then blurred into the underworld don who broke the law too, if only to get rich quick, and often had a sad back-story to justify his choices. The result was one of the finest portraits of urban angst in Yash Chopra's Deewaar, the story of an ordinary coolie working in the Mumbai docks who joins a gang of smugglers and swiftly rises in the ranks to become a dreaded don himself. The character was modelled after Haji Mastan Mirza, a smuggler who prospered through the 60s and 70s and eventually decided to come clean, float a political party and project himself as a quasi-messiah apart from romancing a small-time starlet and financing and producing films.

Now Milan Luthria's Once Upon A Time in Mumbai tries to re-tell the same myths that have built themselves around Mastan, off-setting his heroic image as smuggler-cum-messiah with his rogue protegee Dawood Ibrahim (although there isn't clear evidence that Dawood was indeed part of Mastan's gang at one point) who diversified into drugs and contract killings and soiled the relatively peaceful environment of the Mumbai underworld with his vicious ways, and eventually masterminded the 1993 blasts which shook the city's very foundation. Luthria doesn't add any new dimension to the story, merely recounts it in a predictable fashion and for anyone who knows their underworld history, there's nothing on offer here, except a nostalgic throwback to the 1970s and the relative 'innocence' of the times.

Sultan Mirza (Ajay Devgn) calls Mumbai his 'mehbooba', romances an actress named Rehana (Kangana Ranaut who looks dazed), divides the city into various zones to prevent rival dons from fighting with each other, rules the seas bringing in smuggled goods and doles out cash and justice generously to the poor and needy who flock to him. Along comes ACP Agnel Wilson (Randeep Hooda, impressive) determined to crush the likes of Sultan and keep Mumbai's streets free of vice. He tries to take on Sultan by weaning Rehana away from him. When that fails, he encourages Shoab (Emraan Hashmi, superb) the volatile son of an honest police officer to break Sultan's gang from within. Shoaib has a history of violence (we see him wearing his anger on his sleeve right from childhood) and while he admires Sultan, he's too ambitious for his own good. 

The first half of the film holds together quite well. Luthria is spot-on with the art direction, costumes, background score (simply brilliant and one of the high points of the film) and the '70s-style dramatic dialogues. Both Devgn and Hashmi are perfect foils to each other -- the former exudes an understated charisma, while the latter is brash and cocky in a self-assured way. While Sultan romances Rehana like an old-world majnu, Shoaib treats his girl (Prachi Desai, horribly miscast) like she's his to love or crush as he pleases. 

But as Shoaib starts growing bolder and Sultan decides to turn over a new leaf (because Rehana has a congenital heart condition, if you please), the film falls apart rapidly. Whatever interest there was in the graph of these two characters at the beginning is lost when it rolls out neatly to a trite end. There are no complexities to either man and they are painted with far too broad strokes for anyone to connect with them -- if you can get past the basic fact that they are basically just a pair of goons, that is. Still, in a film like Maqbool, it was possible to feel for the protagonist even as he killed and looted, because the character wasn't merely a caricature of a don, but a man of some courage and many failings. The glorification of Sultan and an equal vilification of Shoaib is the only goal Luthria seems to have set out for himself. The heroines hang around doing precious little like a lot of 70s male-dominated films. 

One would have thought Ramgopal Varma had milked the gangster film dry and there really wasn't anything left to be said about the sorry players of the Mumbai underworld. But somehow filmmakers and audiences alike seem to have an endless fascination for these dubious figures and the cops are often left holding their head in shame (like Agnel does in this film). When was the last time we watched a film about an upright police officer who doggedly pursues the forces of darkness and vanquishes them in the end in an old-fashioned battle of good versus evil?