It transports you to a dark and grim world, where an event of series of bomb blasts at mumbai in 1993, slowly brings you face to face with shocking issues viz. terrorism, lawlessness, communalism, Police force, cruelty, Human rights etc. in an amazing manner. Writer turned successful writer-director Anurag Kashyap deserves a salute for this brilliant piece of cinema. Not just his style is absolutely original, captivating but his grasp over visuals amply supported by cinematographer Nataraja is stunning and Powerful. So, welcome another new age director, a breed which is now determined to take Indian cinema to new level. The sound design of film is equally haunting.
The performances are superb, the treatment is realistic, touching and Narrative is informative, investigative, revealing and content heavy.
Yes, those very reasons might become short coming also as normal theatre going audience are not used to such form of cinema. But yes, somewhere the film falls short when the length of film starts testing the patience of the audience. Few episodes viz. the one involving subplot of Badshah Khan should be drastically trimmed. Also the last part of the film took a documentary form and there is some preaching, which was redundant.
There is also overuse of flash back and flash forward techniques, but again the culprit is the length as things become repetitive after a point.
But as a whole it is one superbly crafted, brilliant use of cinema to bring contemporary issue rather than just aiming for mindless entertainment. Pity on the people who call themselves cinema-buffs but has not seen this film!. Anyway it is entirely their loss.