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Stay away from this Gang

Aparajita Saha

Reviewing a movie isn't an easy job -- ask me! One is either accused of being partial towards or prejudiced against a particular film. The fact is, you can never win them all.

That's why Gang is a reviewer's delight -- it is so unbearable from all points of view that for once, there just has to be a consensus!

It's shabby, excessively long, gory, violent, hackneyed, gruesome... you get the point, right? It leaves you numb, desensitised and reduces your life span by approximately four years.

Since I have to write something at least about the storyline, here goes nothing…Gangu (Jackie Shroff), Abdul (Nana Patekar), Nihal (Kumar Gaurav) and Gary (Javed Jaffrey) are four friends who are compelled to form a GANG (G for Gangu, A for Abdul and so on) to make ends meet.

The movie grapples with the over-abused fact that crime doesn't pay and once you enter its confines, it is too late to turn back. It took me less than a minute to write the moral of the story down… it took the director, the late Mazhar Khan, three hours of mayhem, a million dead bodies and a zillion bottles of fake blood to get the same point across.

One interesting aspect about the movie is that it took about 10 years to make. Correction, what is interesting is that in these six years, Juhi Chawla's evolution as an actress is faithfully chronicled.

Her first scene transports us back to the Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak days -- plastic earrings, frilly frocks, jazzy belts, jarring make-up et al. Then suddenly she reappears, in the post-Lootere and Darr look -- sophisticated, poised, glamorous -- only to disappear again into the '80s. Honestly, quite fascinating to watch, she restores my faith in makeovers.

Mukesh Khanna deserves a special mention for delivering the least credible impersonation ever of a Pathan in Hindi movies. Gulshan Grover looks truly repulsive as one of the many baddies, and no, I don't mean it as a compliment. Imtiaz Khan valiantly attempts to impersonate brother Amjad -- in his avtaar as Gabbar Singh in Sholay -- and fails miserably.

Jackie Shroff ages through the movie. Not surprising, considering the movie took so many years to make. Yet, he's easily the best thing that happened to it.

Jaaved Jafrey has long hair, a plastic earring and jeans with distinct neon shades at the beginning of the movie. The end sees him with short hair, in staid trousers -- another case of evolution here!

Gang is a comeback vehicle of sorts for Kumar Gaurav. But if this movie fares the way we think it would, he's going right back to where he came from!

Anu Malik's music is hummable, especially the Juhi Chawla number, Dole, which is one of the main highlights in the movie. A pity the song gets over within the first 10 minutes -- there's not much to look forward to after that.

If you're scanning the papers for a movie to watch this weekend, avoid this one. If you have nothing to do and would do anything to kill time, avoid the film. If the only movie hall in your town plays Gang, avoid it. The key word here is 'avoid.' Or else you may not survive the ordeal and live to tell your story.

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