Movie Review: “Bombay Velvet”

Rating: 3 of 5

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Genre: Drama

Cast: Ranbir Kanpoor, Anushka Sharma, Karan Johar, Kay Kay Menon.

Directed by Anurag Kashyap ‘Bombay Velvet’ is based on Gyan Prakash’s book Mumbai Fables and is about those days when a newly independent India was struggling to find its feet. A story of a wannabe ‘big shot’ Balraj played by Ranbir Kapoor and an aspiring jazz singer Rosie played by Anushka Sharma, who fall in love and everything changes. Their shared reality changes their individual perception of the future. Their worlds collide and their destinies continue to spin out of their control.

This is not the first time we are seeing this happen in a film. It has happened in numerous filmy love stories but we expect Kashyap to bring something more to the rendition of a story. Usually Kashyap’s characters are complex, we have seen him play with the greys of an individual’s personality. Every one of them has a journey and as we go along, a layer peels off revealing something about the person, we didn’t know existed.

Anurag Kashayp’s journey from shoestring budget films to a mega Bollywood thriller is not as in-depth as some of his earlier films, but he has spared no effort in making it a believable premise. Thanks to fantastic CGI, his sets look authentic and provide a credible backdrop to the characters. The set designing of ‘Bombay Velvet, is its real strength as it restricts the story from going all over the place in the first half. But the same can’t be said about the second half where the film suddenly becomes a self destructing story of an illogical protagonist.

Ranbir Kapoor is superb as the lad who only has a single aim, to be a big shot. He has put a lot of efforts to establish himself in the street smart role, and it shows. Anushka is also great, as the girl who has known abuse all her life. The surprise is Karan Johar as the gay business magnate who has more than a soft corner for Balraj. He is oily, sarcastic, vile, yet suave. Satyadeep Mishra and Manish Chaudhary also lend in good performances. The songs by Amit Trivedi , fortunately don’t act as speed-breakers, and are interspersed in the narrative well. The recreated Fifi song and Behroopia are especially good.

While trying to do justice to the ’60s era, Kashyap fails to offer anything note worthy to the screenplay. The first half of the film moves like a non stop train, with lot of events happening and characters dropping in and out, that it doesn’t matter whether the viewers are managing to keep track of what’s going on. If Kashyap wants us to invest in their love story, even that’s a half baked attempt. We neither feel for any of the two characters, especially Balraj. There are no twists and turns that we expect in a Anurag Kashyap film, nor are there any of his trademark witty one liners. Also the movie looks like an ode to Brian De Palma’s master-piece, Scarface. In the climax when Balraj burst out into the club’s kitchen with two tommy’s, it clearly resembles that of the great Al Pachino.

Kashyap made films from the heart and it struck a chord and here, he dilutes his style, attempting cosmetic precision and the film remains just that, a superficial story with superfluous characters.