Bombay Velvet is slick but slippery

Anurag Kashyap’s dark and gritty take on the city in the swingin’ sixties keeps you glued to your seat

KARACHI:

Expectations and the hope to fulfill them are what keep life afloat. Whether you prefer looking at the glass half full or realise the Sisyphean nature of your task, the yearning to keep yourself busy is what you cling on. And if lady-luck and focus complement this journey, you may end up achieving a few milestones on the way. You may prefer to take the road less travelled, but when you decide to choose the same road more than once, you’re likely to face the biggest challenge of your life – exceeding the benchmark you’ve set for yourself. This is perhaps why Anurag Kashyap’s dark, gritty and stylish take on Bombay of the 1960s will not be considered as a milestone in his journey.

Although the film is a thoroughly entertaining spectacle that gives you value for money, it’s not what Kashyap’s known for. You feel the characters’ agony but you don’t bleed with them in pain, you sense treachery but you’re not part of the game, and you see the hands are sweaty yet you don’t miss the aim. Owing to its overzealousness to imitate American gangster films and lack of Kashyap’s signature rawness, the film, despite being the best Bollywood offering so far this year, fails to provide the expected overwhelming experience.



Balraj (Ranbir Kapoor) is a street boxer, who is addicted to getting beaten up, and that says everything about his physical toughness and mental roughness. Under the shadow of a Bombay flooded with bars, cabarets, cigars and dahlias, lays Balraj’s thirst to be a ‘big shot’ and fondness to wear corduroy suits. Aiding that thirst is his love interest, Rosie (Anushka Sharma), a jazz singer, who Balraj falls in love with on his first encounter. But, much to his disappointment, she chooses an older, suited man over him when both of them ask her out around the same time.

In the struggle to be part of the upper-class of Bombay, Balraj and his sidekick Chimman (Satyadeep Mishra) try to rob a man, who chases them back only to offer them a job. That man is Kaizad Khambata, a flamboyant media mogul or, to put it in simpler words, Karan Johar with a moustache.  So begins a power struggle that involves Balraj’s evolution into ‘Johnny’ Balraj with sweet jazz tunes echoing moral corruption in the backdrop.

The essential strength and weakness of Bombay Velvet is its plot and the storyline in general. The chain of events that connects a convoluted narrative keeps you glued to your seat, with not even a single instance causing the tightly-knit story to drag. However, there is a downside to that as well. The elements that connect that chain of events are clichés associated with crime dramas, be it a Godfather-like figure in the form of Kaizad or the narrative getting complicated in the second-half, only to come to a predictable end.

As far as the performances are concerned, Ranbir showcases the more physical side of obsession and delivers it with the right amount of desperation and anxiety – something he explored on a more psychological level in Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar. Anushka was smooth as a dolled-up Jazz singer but a short cameo by Raveena Tandon as Dahlia showed us the class and charisma lacking in her attempt to lip-sync. Vivaan Shah plays yet another side-character to perfection as Rosie’s love-struck chauffeur, while Karan was aptly cast as a quick-witted manipulator, but didn’t deliver anything extraordinary.

Verdict: Watch Bombay Velvet for an entertaining cinematic experience but don’t expect a masterpiece, Anurag Kashyap is usually known to deliver. You will enjoy the film but forget about it as soon as you leave the cinema.

 

Rafay Mahmood is the Life & Style Editor of The Express Tribune and tweets @Rafay_mahmood

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th,  2015.

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