Ali Abbas Zafar who gave a light-hearted triangle love story 3 years back (Mere Brother Ki Dulhan), has come up with another triangle this time with Gunday. This light-hearted part is replaced by heavy fights though. The urban and ubercool leads also are replaced with macho-looking gym manufactured Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor dipped freshly in engine oil. Did Ali Abbas succeed?
The story begins in 1970s during the formation of Bangladesh, and the two orphan kids Bikram (Ranveer Singh) and Bala (Arjun Kapoor) are sent to Dhaka. They are thick friends and become gun couriers for a living. When an army officer tries to molest Bikram, Bala murders the officer, and they both escape to Calcutta. The fearless kids grow up conquering the complete blackmarket in Calcutta. The lionhearted lads eventually become the men of masses too. The Calcutta police want to cleanse their business and appoint Satyajit Sarkar (Irrfan Khan) as the ACP. Satya has his own hidden agenda to get his mission accomplished. Meanwhile Nandita (Priyanka Chopra) enters Calcutta and instantly steals the hearts of Bikram-Bala. How the triangle is intercepted by the treachery of Satya forms the rest of the story.
Well, there is lot of thod-faad, maara-maari, dhishyum-dhisyum from Ranveer-Arjun and enough of glamour contributed by backless-cum-sleeveless blouses of Priyanka. Unfortunately, there is not enough sparks in the story to win the hearts of viewers. In fact you can perfectly extrapolate the entire story from the Irrfan’s introduction scene. The twists are highly predictable. The highly hyped chemistry of Ranveer-Arjun falls flat too. To make it further weaker, there are bunch of unintentionally funny scenes too. Ranveer Singh is surprisingly lifeless. He does great in his penultimate scene though. Priyanka gets some ridiculous scenes especially towards the end, as if a mockery is going on about the 70’s movies. The only reason for which Irrfan agreed to the role might be the big fat cheque from YashRaj.
The movie’s strength is its super cool tracks from Sohail Sen. They come in frequently, and thus periodically cleaning the mess the clichéd and predictable moments the movie creates. Out of the four pillars, only one is strong and that’s Arjun Kapoor. He was brilliant portraying the hot-headed and gullible Bala. He displays impressive histrionics and lights up the screen whenever he appears. Cinematography is good, and editing was adequate too.
With this highly predictable script, the overall experience is mediocre.
