Gumraah Movie Review: Gumraah’s intriguing screenplay, especially in the second half, makes it an engaging investigative thriller that should not be missed. Aditya Roy Kapur starrer is an engaging whodunit investigative thriller that will keep you hooked until the end.
Gumraah Movie Review Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Gumraah Movie Cast: Aditya Roy Kapur, Mrunal Thakur, Ronit Roy, Vedika Pinto, Mohit Anand, Deepak Kalra and the ensemble.
Gumraah Movie Director: Vardhan Ketkar
Gumraah Movie Story: Gumraah is a remake of the Tamil film Thadam. The film follows an investigation which becomes a baffling process when it is discovered that the suspected criminal has a twin who is also a petty criminal.
Gumraah Movie Review
If the way a thriller works is compared to an explosion, Bollywood thrillers (those starring big stars) are the equivalent of a cracker that lets out erratic spurts and fizzles out. Gumraah, on the other hand, feels more like a bomb that offers a passable payout but detonates at the appropriate time.
Instead of infusing it, Gumraah uses its fillers as a precursor to the major theme of the film. Gumraah begins by introducing its main characters through chapters. The story follows the lives of two identical persons, a civil engineer named Arjun Bhatnagar and a highly educated gangster named Ronnie Surve (both names are linked with beauty), whose lives become intertwined after a terrifying tragedy. The sodium-lit night passages filmed with a combination of static and rolling Dutch angles (the director and cinematographer had taken a page from Ram Gopal Varma’s playbook) effectively set the tone for the picture.
The eerie atmosphere created by Ronnie’s sequences is followed by Arjun’s portions, which are shot and staged in a rather generic manner (and yes, it does include a generous amount of lens flare), creating a slightly inconsistent visual language. As a result, the first portions appear to be less invested in the process of mood creation. However, when Arjun and Ronnie’s lives collide, the minor glitches do not reappear. The film’s street scenes at night are balanced by the stark, stark exteriors of the day. The plot’s pacing has also changed as a result of this change. The red herring that occurs after the point is given some significance by the female lead character, Mrunal Thakur.
The majority of the film takes place in a police station, but director Vardhan Ketkar makes sure that the staging and atmosphere keep us interested without making us feel like we’re watching the same scene over and over. The fading walls complement the warm colour scheme of the indoor space, which was beautifully art-directed. A scene in which the horrifying stares from the police invite Ronnie’s arrival at the station is another excellent stretch of the imagination.
However, the film really takes off in the second half thanks to a really creepy, cold flashback about a broken relationship. The first half’s thorny issues are resolved, and the movie provides the much-needed suspension of disbelief at this point. In contrast to the characters in the first half, even the humour feels more natural, and a minor character like the forensic expert has some depth in terms of character and makes a presence. Despite a background score that literally encourages us to feel sentimental, the flashback sections feel a little chilling.
Aditya Roy Kapur gives a painstaking performance with a great level of effortlessness. Overall, Gumraah is well-written whodunnit with a really gripping second half.