Gumraah Movie Review

Gumraah Movie Review

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Gumraah is a remake of the 2019 Tamil film Thadam. It harks back to the potboilers of the '70s, where stories of two people sharing the same face was common. One would be somewhat bad, the other would be somewhat good and many twists and turns later, they'd stop fighting and unite against a common

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 enemy. It's a tried and tested formula which has mostly given favourable results. The trick is to add a hint of a new ingredient to the recipe, so as to lure the audience into exploring it again. That's what the makers of Thadam had done and that's what director Vardhan Ketkar has tried to emulate. Arjun Sehgal

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 (Aditya Roy Kapur), is accused of a gruesome murder. Senior cop, ACP Dhiren Yadav (Ronit Roy), who has a grudge against him, is delighted that he'll be able to deal a bitter blow to his nemesis before his retirement. But his junior officer, Shivani Mathur (Mrunal Thakur) is convinced of Arjun's

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 innocence, as the police also nabs a drunkard, Sooraj Rana aka Ronnie (also Aditya Roy Kapur) as a suspect in the case. Ronnie is a borderline criminal. He's a thief, conman and an inveterate gambler. And looks exactly like Arjun. In any other scenario, he would have been Dhiren's choice too, instead of

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 his white collar lookalike. But his obsession over a past slight makes him mark down Arjun as the murder suspect. The two officers, working with conflicting agendas, try to get under the bottom of things. Egos take precedence over justice, and this clash proves to be just the escape tunnel needed by

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 the real culprit to slip by. The film doesn't have a good pace in the first half. We're treated to Arjun's convoluted love story with Janhvi (Vedika Pinto) and we also witness Ronnie's misadventures as a conman in the company of his bumchum called Chaddi (Deepak Kalra). It all seems to be going

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 nowhere, till it picks up speed in the second half. Plenty of twists and turns get administered. There's a lengthy fight scene between Arjun and Ronnie and methods and motives get examined. Unlike the police, which remain clueless till the end, the audience does get a closure, thanks to full blown

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 confessions served on a plate. The makers have opted for an ending which might serve as a door towards a sequel. So far, we have no news of Thadam 2, so maybe that idea got petered out. The angst of Ronit Roy's character isn't fleshed out. It would have been better if we were treated to a backstory

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 regarding that. And we also fail to see why Shivani isn't toeing the official line. She's no stickler for procedure – she doesn't object to the third degree tactics meted out to Arjun to get a confession. So why exactly she wants to save him and what beef she has with Ronnie isn't fleshed out either. These

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 questions, left unanswered, hamper the film's growth as a genuine whodunnit. Ronit Roy is competent as a biassed cop, making his intentions clear through body language and fits of anger. Mrunal Thakur has been given a half-written character to build on and somehow manages to keep it afloat. The film

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 hinges on Aditya Roy Kapur's performance. He's made a career out of playing drunken characters and looks good playing the bad guy, Ronnie. His Arjun is a bit of a bland character. The lack of colour may have been intentional but doesn't give much scope to the actor. For instance, he knows he's screwed as

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 soon as he sets eyes on Dhiren but there's hardly any reaction from him. A little more anger would have made it better. In an earlier era, one can imagine Sanjay Dutt or Sunny Deol essaying the role and they would have raved, ranted and made a nuisance of themselves, drawing in the audience… 

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 TRAILER : GUMRAAH