"Bombay Velvet", Anurag Kashyap's most ambitious project riding on 90 crores, based on the "Mumbai Fables" by Gyan Prakash. It starts just after the Indian independence and tells the story of how the seven islands become Bombay, the reclamation, corrupt politician, organized crime, Jazz cafés and love story of Johnny Balraj and Rosie.
Balraj comes to Bombay with his mother and wants to become "Big Shot" and he can go to any length to achieve his dreams.
We all admire Anurag Kashyap for the cinematic brilliance and he has taken the affliction of taking the Indian Cinema to the next level. We all have seen "Black Friday", "Dev D","Gulaal", "GOW 1&2" and "Ugly". He is a man with panache and his movies deal with burning issues and fantastic subjects. However, "Bombay Velvet" fell really short on all aspects, it never embraces you as a viewer and it never connects with you.
It has a world-class art direction, awesome sets of Bombay erected in Sri Lanka, fantastic cinematography and CGI. Every nuance of 60's Bombay has been put to the detail. The background score is mostly loud but some songs compliment the scenes. It runs for 150 delirious minutes.
However, the writing is never convincing, it tries to be "Godfather", "Goodfellas" and "Scarface" altogether. The culmination is pretty sour as we never understand the sudden changes. There are many subplots which do not add anything to the story and left open.
Ranbir's character is powerful but it is confused between a gangster and a lover. Anushka Sharma doesn't have much to do except lip sync and some exaggerated scenes. Karan Johar looks phony as a slick and stylish villain but he is flat throughout the movie. Why did he laugh so much on the word "Tender", it looked awful? Satyadeep Mishra has done a good job. Kay Kay impresses as always in a small role.
We could also see Varun Grover's stand-up comedy presentation in the café.
This could have been a way better film if some more time would have been invested in writing because it has some instances of being a masterpiece.
