Once Upon A Time In Mumbai
Dir: Milan Luthria
Starring: Ajay Devgan, Emraan Hashmi, Kangana Ranaut, Prachi Desai, Randeep Hooda
“Once upon a time” – so begins many a familiar tale. And so it is with Once Upon A Time In Mumbai, a story which in its skeletal bones (chronicling the rise of a Mumbai underworld gangster and his feud with a former protégé) has been told often and over a period of a number of years by Mollywood. Included in these tellings and re-tellings are Deewar, a movie which went a long way towards establishing the legend of Amitabh Bachchan and a bunch of movies from the stable of Ram Gopal Varma, like Company and D.
Loosely based on the lives of and the relationship between Haji Mastan and Dawood Ibrahim, Journeyman director Luthria does a good job of recreating the Mumbai of the 70s (including a nice little nod towards the impact Dimple Kapadia’s Bobby played on the Indian consciousness of the time) including a certain amount of purple prose (thanks to writer Rajat Arora) which was de rigueur for the films of the day. However, the screenplay isn’t as taut as it should have been and there are certain events which are built up to be of great import but then end up going nowhere and certain plot points kind of escape logic. However, the film’s greatest drawback is its familiarity. The same problem plagues the lead performances. Once has Ajay Devgan in the Haji Mastan inspired role of Sultan Mirza and Emraan Hashmi as Shoaib Khan in the Dawood Ibrahim part and both are quite good – except that both of them have played similar roles in many a movie. Kangana Ranaut (who seems to have fallen prey to the Mollywood/Hollywood disease of having her lips plumped) and Prachi Desai are their respective molls and they do their job creditably enough as well.
Note to historians: familiar tales tend to be repeated with minor/major differences. The Haji Mastan/Dawood Ibrahim feud was replicated in the battle for control of the Mumbai underworld between Ibrahim and his own protégé Chota Rajan, earlier chronicled in Ram Gopal Varma’s Company.
Cut to chase: Done reasonably well but the tale is too familiar.
