Gumrah Is Much Fun To Watch

Gumrah

Rating: *** ½

The trick of  enjoying Gumrah  is two-pronged:  go with  zero expectations, and  if you haven’t seen the  original Tamil film Thadam, you would  be hooked to the story of identical twins(told  apart  in the Hindi version by  one of them wearing printed shirts) who  meet in a police station as prime crime accuseds , after one  of them snuffs  out a wealthy suburban guy , apparently to steal his  20 lakhs.

But hang on! Nothing is  as  simple  as it seems.  Not that Gumrah  revels in unnecessary complications. It is a neatly done, nominally engaging  whodunit crime caper where the  fun quotient remains  uppermost. The topping never loses it tangy flavour, and that’s what keeps our interest-level  perked  up right till the  end.

 Oh, one more thing: unlike several recent crime thrillers that start  off well and come to a deadend at the  climax, Gumrah  doesn’t lose it way towards the finale. It  remains clearheaded  and  uncluttered to the  end. There is a sense of mischief in the police procedural as one  of the twins “plays”  the female cop  Shivani Mathur .

I am not saying it.She is.

Mrunal, by the way,seems to have waltzed into  a role  of a tough female cop  tailormade  for Radhika Apte. We don’t know where Shivani comes from. Or where she will go after the film is over.Throughout the  bracing police  procedural director Vardhan Ketkar focuses on creating an immediacy and  a fresh energy  rather  than leaning too heavily  into the Thadam. Consequently  the  remake exudes  a sense  of  renewed  momentum.

The  saga of two identical twins who move in separate  directions has been done  to death. Gumrah reawakens interest in the Ram  Aur Shyam genre  without  making the twins  illustrative . Both Arjun and Ronny in  Gumrah have their grey areas . Both are  forced to a corner where they must tackle the demons  of their past, and both comes across as  flawed human beings capable  of  murder.

That’s what makes Gumrah a notch more engaging than expected. Aditya Roy Kapoor works hard  at giving the  two characters a  distinct  identity. He  is a competent actor  waiting for  a more than competent  director to take  him into the  big league. In the  meantime  there is Gumrah. It doesn’t lose its way.And that, given Bollywood’s  recent track record,  is saying a  lot.