“Blade + skin = blood,” we’re told, is what Perpendicular knows, and this makes him “more terrifying than Faizal.” He literally plays with a razor blade in his mouth (kids!), and uses his half brother’s fame to his advantage: “Faizal Khan is my elder bro.
Perhaps it is impossible to expect it to reach the same highs, but it it’s still a bit disappointing to report that it does not.īut just when things are seeming a bit dry – comparatively – the movie gets a shot in the arm with the arrival of one Perpendicular Khan ( Aditya Kumar), Sardar’s fourth son. It only spans several years, rather than multiple decades, with a tighter cast of characters and a more straightforward story. The loss of several major names from Part 1 hurts after the epic scope of the first film, Part 2 feels, well, smaller. This film – clocking in, like its predecessor, at two and a half hours – is mostly his story, along with that of his half brother Definite ( Zeishan Quadri). The burden of revenge is passed to Faizal (“If Allah doesn’t kill me, the neighborhood will,” he gloomily says), a drug addict and perennial disappointment to his mother Nagma. We also see, about fifteen minutes in, a rather shocking death, one that tells us that this second installment will have no worries about dispensing with major characters from Part 1. Part 1ends in predictably bloody fashion, with a murder that is not unexpected, but still remarkably powerful.Īs Part 2 opens, we see a new, more forceful side of Danish.
(Stay with me – it’s a messy family situation.) By the time we reach the mid-eighties, Sardar has risen to prominence and is finally locked in head-to-head battle with Singh, and adult sons Danish ( Vineet Kumar) and Faizal ( Nawazuddin Siddiqui) are firmly in the Sonny and Fredo roles, respectively. Cue more soap opera-tics, as Sardar is jailed, takes another wife, Durga ( Reema Sen), and has another son, the fantastically named Definite. The now adult Sardar Khan, married (put-upon first wife Nagma is played very nicely by Richa Chadda) and with two sons, Danish and Faizal, begins to strike back against Singh. We jump ahead two decades, moving through the sixties and into the seventies, as Singh gains power and the mines become more unsafe. Like young Vito Corleone, Shahid’s son Sardar is forced to flee, and vows revenge against Singh as the narrator tells us, “this killed Sardar’s childhood.” Much later in the film, we hear Sardar’s M.O.: “My life has but one mission: revenge … I don’t just want to kill him … I want to destroy him piece by piece.” “There are no friends here,” Shahid says early in the film, and these words prove prophetic, as he is murdered by a suspicious Singh.
After a violent train robbery leads to his exodus from Wasseypur, Shahid begins to work as an enforcer in the coal mines owned by a crucial figure in both Part 1 and 2, Ramadhir Singh (played a tough but never over the top Tigmanshu Dhulia). A narrator and archival footage set the scene, and soon we’re introduced to the saga’s catalyst, Shahid Khan ( Jaideep Ahlawat). Confused? Don’t worry – you’ll have plenty of time to get to know the characters in this “dirty game of deceit and disguise.”Īfter this seemingly present day opening, Gangs moves back in time to the 1940s. The gunfight is kinetic and explosive, and completely chaotic we have no sense of who is who, who is “good” or “bad,” or why any of this is occurring. The first installment opens on a television screen, and a subtitle telling us the soundtrack is “.” The serene scene erupts with gunfire for a remarkably appropriate start Gangs is, in a sense, one long soap opera, with the occasional glossiness quickly ripped apart by bullets. Director Anurag Kashyap’s work is also – whether taken together, or separately – among 2012’s best. Gangs of Wasseypur, a five-hour, two-part, wildly blood-drenched saga is, without question, one of the must-sees at the Toronto International Film Festival. How fitting, in a year that has seen a restored version of Sergio Leone’s embattled, multigenerational gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America, that a new, Leone-influenced masterpiece from India arrives on North American shores.