Bombay Velvet

Bombay Velvet - All Style, no substance

Bombay Velvet is the age old story of 1970s, where a 20 something protagonist arrives in "Sapno ka Sheher" and wants to become "Mumbai ka Raja" overnight. Whether it is Deewar or Satya, basic plot remains the same. However, narrative of the film and screenplay is largely inspired from the west. Bombay Velvet was a personal ambition of Anurag Kashyap. He grew up watching gangster movies, heavily influenced by Martin Scorsese and his genre. He wanted to give a desi twist to Scarface and made Bombay Velvet. I even found the look and mannerism of Ranbir inspired by Al Pacino.

Direction of Anurag Kashyap is above average but there is hardly any scope of marvel with such a cliched plot. Movie is based on a novel, Mumbai Fables by Gyan Prakash. Anurag has tried to show entire novel in 150 min and hence you'll find movie extremely fast paced with tons of characters leaving you baffled. Editing is done by academy award winner Thelma Schoonmaker but I felt she has done a shoddy job this time (or she couldn't cope up with overpowering director).

Ranbir Kapoor has done a good justice to his role but I didn't find his performance anything close to clap worthy. Anushka Sharma was totally wasted in this film and she hardly has any juicy role. I had very high expectations from Karan Johar after watching him in the trailer. He carried off Kaizad Khambata very well in the beginning, but somewhere in between he lost the character and came back to his Koffee with Karan antics. There were so many characters - Kay Kay Menon, Manish Choudhary, Siddhartha Basu that none of them had anytime to show their skill.

Music by Amit Trivedi was a big let down and all the songs were boring. He tried to give it a touch of 1960s Jazz era but couldn't create something as catchy as Kaisi Paheli Zindagani - Parineeta. One team whom I would give full marks for Bombay Velvet is its art directors. It was a mammoth task to create Bombay of 60s and they did it brilliantly with all that razzmatazz.

Verdict - Don't go with high expectations. If you are a hardcore fan of retro gangsta movies Or if you want to see old styled Bombay, you might find it appealing. Otherwise, it is OK to give it a pass. 

Ratings: 3/5