I’ve been a great fan of gangster movies...ok let me correct it, authentic gangster movies..there is a difference when every other film made in hollywood or bollywood seem to be a gangster flick...by that I mean movies like The Godfather I & II, Road to perdition etc..and this side of hollywood, the likes of Satya, Company, Maqbool etc...Though you’ll ask me why am I talking of Maqbool here, but if you’ve seen the movie you’ll agree that its one of those very few gangster movies which make do without too much blood shed but still have enormous impact on the viewer..very unlike Ramu who’s movies have that in your face attitude...but I like him for that!!
So with this notion I decided to go for ’D’!!The name seemed intriguing at the same time very obvious...but then this ’’D’’ was for ’Deshu’ and not ’Dawood’ !!The movie starts with a narrative which is typically ’Company’ type but not having the same impact..like a storyteller, it simply briefs you on who our protagonist is...and why is he here...just about when he’s trying to settle down in mumbai, he is a witness to a gruesome chawl murder...the police take him for interrogation since he is the only likely witness...the gangsters who commited the crime are also on the look out for this witness..so deshu is threatened by the gang leader to forget about identifying the murderer... so he changes his mind...then he is thrashed by the police for not identifying the murderers..this is where Deshu goes for some soul searching and decides the best move is to take on the dark route...He does a lot of double crossing to raise his position to higher ranks and finally becomes the right hand of an aging don who’s evil duties are handled by our hero(what an irony...a true blue gangster is subject of our sympathy even when he has no reasons to be a gangster!!)The only problem is that the ganglord has two good for nothing sons who are envious of Deshu’s continued rise along the hierarchy...so they do everything possible to rebuke him, criticize him, and finally throw him out of the team...but our hero is an untired performer...he tries to ignore them and get on wid his job but atime comes when the ganglord is made to believe that deshu is back stabbing him...deshu seeing the futility of proving his innocence decides to go on his own way and thus begins the cat and mouse chase of killing each other’s opponents and gain a larger chunk of the mumbai underworld pie...from here on its just the ways in which deshu eliminates his opponents and finally reaches the epitome of it all...all the smaller gangsters are ’united’, ’corporatized’ under his control...and in the end he simply leaves the country to control the mafia from an undisclosed place....and this is where the story ends..quiet abruptly....
The problems wid the movie are obvious...the movie starts very fast paced...sags in the middle and almost ends abruptly...many characters are placed here and there but they dont seem to strike the right chord wid the audience to make an impact other than our protagonist...rukhsar and isha’s role are featherlight... chunky pandey is thrown here and there though he could have easily done a bigger role..like bhiku mhatre(manoj bajpai) in satya...
Also the movie has a ’not guilty’ attitude which sends out a wrong message to the public...just the case of people relating wid a antihero who, for no reason, wants to be an apostle of evil somehow glorifies the stark evil of the underworld!!
And it happens tht our hero loves to look like an ’Enrique iglesias’ clone...wearing those aviators and that goaty...see the enrique song, ’hero’ and you’ll know what I mean!!
to top it all, the biggest possible flaw in the movie are the song sequences...they simply had no reason to be out there....i, for one, appreciated ramu’s snapping of songs from few of his movies....if there is no need of a speed breaker, why use ’em?? Why do they make a comeback in such a serious movie?? no idea...i only hope that in future ramu sticks to his ’songless thriller’ style for the good of it... Its at this point I feel tht indian movies should come of age and take a lesson or two from their hollywood counterparts...if its so imperative to have songs in movies, keep them out of the movie but as OSTs...
But given the love of indian cinema goers for song n dance, its not likely to realise in near future!!