Johnny Gaddar Movie Review

By Varun Unnikrishnan 10 December 2007 54 views No Comment

Starring: Zakir Hussain, Dharmendra, Rimi Sen, Vinay Pathak, Ashwini Khalsekar, Neil Nitin Mukesh.

Johnny Gaddaar , or Johnny “Treacherous”, is a crime-thriller directed by Sriram Raghavan. The plot revolves around a notorious gang that deals in shifty money transactions, and what happens when the well-intentioned youngest member of the gang(Neil Nitin Mukesh) gets a little too greedy for his own good.

Director Sriram Raghavan’s previous film, Ek Hasina Thi was an experiment in many ways, both in its storyline and performances. While his latest effort might not be as groundbreaking, it is still an efficient, quick paced flick. Bollywood noir films are rare, and while the movie is hardly flawless, it must still be appreciated.

The story, without giving much away, revolves around a deal involving Seshadri (Dharmendra) and his gang, which includes Shardul (Zakir Hussain), Prakash (Vinay Pathak), Shiva (Daya Shetty) and Vikram (Neil Nitin Mukesh). Director Raghavan makes a good move in hardly revealing anything about the deal at all, preferring instead to focus on the interactions between members of the gang. Everything goes downhill when Vikram decides to keep the money so that he can migrate to Canada with his lover Mini (Rimi Sen), who is already married to one of the gang members. Vikram steadily builds up a body count, and the story is about his struggle to keep things quiet, while everybody else tries desperately to figure out who the killer is.

The movie is slick and cleverly edited, the quick cuts and opening character introductions reminding the viewer of similar western crime flicks ( Snatch, for example). Although there is plenty of blood, we hardly see any being spilt, which perhaps takes away from the action a little bit. There aren’t any shots focusing on the money, but otherwise the action is quite brutal and realistic. Movie references abound, which was reassuring to see - it’s always good to know that the director knows the industry. We know the culprit right from the very beginning, so this is hardly a whodunit, and keeps things interesting. The cinematography is crisp and the music is catchy, but those are hardly the selling points of a film like this. A film like this revolves around performances and the script, which seem to be good across the board. All the main characters are pretty well fleshed out, which is unusual for an ensemble movie. The weakest link is unfortunately, the newcomer - Nitin Mukesh. It wasn’t a bad start for him, but seems to come off as confused and unsure. I felt that Dharmendra was underused, but that might just be a matter of opinion. The romance element was executed well, but quite unnecessary in terms of forwarding the plot.

Overall, the film was a good exercise in style, and keeps the tension up till the very end with a simple story and great twists.