REVIEW: MUMBAI SAGA

Producers- Sanjay Gupta, Bhushan Kumar and Sangeeta Ahir

Director- Sanjay Gupta

Star Cast- John Abraham, Emran Hashmi, Kajal Aggarwal, Mahesh Manjrekar, Rohit Roy, Prateik Babbar, Amole Gupte, Sameer Soni , Gulshan Grover , Shaad Randhawa, Rohit Bose Roy and Suniel Shetty

Genre- Social

Rating- ***1/2 (Three and a half)

A Riveting Watch!

Jyothi Venkatesh

Right from the beginning when the titles start flashing, Mumbai Saga based on true events, of the good old 90’s when Bombay was slowly evolving into Mumbai.

It is the story of a commoner-turned-gangster Amartya Rao (John Abraham), whose dramatic rise in the Mumbai of nineties was marked by absolute lawlessness, betrayal and bloody gang wars between underworld goons and Dadas, aided and abetted by the political bigwigs.

But naturally in the scheme of things, the cops were willing pawns in the hands of the one who paid the highest price.

It is about the rise of Amartya Rao when his younger brother Arjun (Prateik Babbar) is attacked by the hafta vasool goons in broad daylight.

The story also has a blood thirsty encounter cop Vijay Savarkar (Emran Hashmi) and a crafty kingmaker politician called Bhau and Sada Anna, a power broker played by Suneil Shetty

As far as performances go, a mention ought to be made of John Abraham who gives a restrained and brawny performance and scores with fist fights though he lacks finesse in the heavy duty emotional sequences.

Suniel Shetty impresses you in his minuscule role as Sada Anna . Emrah Hashmi is good as the Encounter cop but is pitted rather unfairly against a heavy weight like John Abraham, who manages to outweigh him, effect wise.

Kajal Aggarwal gets into the skin of her character as Amartya’s wife Seema with aplomb while Anjana Sukhani does not at all measure up to her role as the wife of the industrialist Sunil Khaitan (Sameer Soni).

Amole Gupte impresses as the eccentric, wily and cunning gangster Gaitonde, while Gulshan Grover as Nari Khan has been wasted.

Prateik Babbar falls short of his expectations while Rohit Bose Roy scores as friend of Arjun effectively.

Mahesh Manjrekar is good as Bhau though at times he seems repetitive as he has been seen in similar roles earlier in various films. Shaad Randhawa also is a treat to watch

The highlight of the film is its heavy duty dialogues which endear you besides the first rate performances by almost each and every one of the actors in the film and the intriguingly penned screenplay by Sanjay Gupta and Robin Bhatt.

Also the deft direction of the film by Sanjay Gupta, the intelligent dialogues by Sanjay Gupta and Vishal Vaibhav coupled by lucid narration of the plot make Mumbai Saga a really riveting watch, though frankly plot is as old as the hills