Gangs Of Wasseypur (Anurag Kashyap) 2012, India

Gangs of Wasseypur was a great movie that illustrated a never ending cycle of violence that begins with a man named Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) and his ambition to exact revenge for his father’s death on the man named Remadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia) known to be the Godfather of the Crime world.

reviewed by Miles Hayford, Metro 4 Theatre, Santa Barbara, CA

The main recurring theme that this movie displays over and over again is the Cycle of Violence which starts with Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) and his main focus of revenge.  The movie starts off with a house being raided in the middle of the night.  A small gang has raided a house believed to be the home of Faizal Khan (Nawazuddin siddique), who is the son of Sardar Khan.  At this point in the movie the viewer doesn’t know the identity of those raiding the house or of those within it, everything remains obscure to the viewer.  The movie continues with the raid ending as the gang assume they had killed the man they were searching for (Faizal Khan), which is not the case.  As the movie progresses the gang is stopped by a police barrier which they proceed to shoot at.

The story starts off strong giving the viewer questions: who is in the house? Why are these people raiding a house in the middle of the night?  In this way the director does a good job at drawing the audiences attention and keeping them interested for 5 more hours.  The story goes on and soon the beginning of the film has briefly been forgotten and now throughout the rest of the movie our focus is shifted to the characters of Sahid Khan (Jaideep Ahlawat), Sardar Khan, Faizal Khan and Ramadhir Singh.  Sahid is a man who has left his home town in fear of being killed by the boss of his village for using his name to steal from trains in the middle of the night.  He and his wife travel to a mining town where his wife dies giving birth to Sardar.  The movie goes on with Sahid attempting to take over the mines and because of that gets killed for it by Ramadhir singh.  The cycle of violence starts as his son Sardar Khan promises to exact revenge on his fathers killer.

Although the movie is about the path of Revenge, a good part of it dealt with the focus of Sardar moving up the ladder of the most powerful people in wasseypur.  Sardar ends up being assassinated by one of Ramadhirs men and his two sons end up inheriting his hatred.  The cycle of violence is apparent at this point as both sons are now bent on vengeance and the flow of the film enters a darker path.

If I were to compare this film to any other film I would name it India’s version of ‘The Godfather’ for many reasons.  There are many similarities between both films such as the death of the older brother Danish Khan can be compared to the death of sonny as he is on the verge of killing his sisters abusive husband.  Michael Corleone who ends up inheriting the family business much like Faizal Khan due to the death of his brother, both not willing to be part of the cycle of hatred that they are now trapped within.

Gangs of Wasseypur was a great movie which utilized many elements to make it a great ‘more than just another gangster film’  Definitely one of my favorite movies watched at the festival.