Anurag Kashyap stands for the rebel in Indian cinema. He knows it too. Black Friday, Dev.D, Gulaal give him every reason in the world to be proud of his tag. This feeling is clearly reflected in Gangs of Wasseypur, which turns out to be his most ambitious & financed project ever. He works with his long-time friends, Manoj Bajpayee, Tigmanshu Dhulia and others, deciding to make a film which does not fall into the cliché of other commercial films. An epic film that tells the story of violence originating through monopoly of coal mines in North India but later feeds itself off the ego of proud descendants of their brave forefathers.

It is as difficult to loathe this film as it is to hate history lessons taught through audio-visuals. The story takes us in, helping us to absorb the details. It starts in one era, moves to another, shows familiar black & white clips, returns to some other era before finally falling on a linear time-line. Characters, places, eras are introduced either by text or the voice-over by Piyush Mishra who plays the uncle to a revenge-vowing bald Sardar Khan (Bajpayee, excelling himself like never before) who's father Shahid Khan (Jaideep Ahlawat, strong screen presence) was killed off by his employer Ramadhir Singh (Dhulia, another remarkable work). Yes, it is difficult to follow the names but fairly easier to remember the faces. The characters develop beautifully through the plot. I wasn't bored at any point, maybe could have watched the second part too.

Kashyap's screenplay stresses more on the plot than the characters. He makes lovable characters throughout the film but has no mercy on them. For instance, the revenge-vowing lead is unashamed of his libido and sleeps around which his wife (Richa Chadda) eventually comes to terms with, which one would would not usually expect (there are numerous other examples with almost every character which would kill the suspense, if mentioned). But these are heartless gangsters which you would feel no sympathy for if you heard about them on the news. This Godfather-esque play of values which have been used time and again in movies makes you expect more from the film as it moves on. Sadly, it doesn't deliver the expected punch as the characterizations lead to digressions in the plot rather than help it move forward.

Then again, how do we fall in love with a movie knowing that whole genealogical parts can be comfortably replaced by sporadic lines of reminiscence? And what exactly goes wrong in this movie that boasts of a strong ensemble of actors, a terrific earthy music score (Sneha Khanwalkar) and spot-on cinematography (his regular, Rajeev Ravi)? It is not hard to see the bits & pieces of frustration (that oozed in No Smoking (2007)) in the ambitions and grandeur of Gangs... Kashyap was in the past forced to tone down Black Friday (2004) by Censors and has not yet been allowed to release his first film Paanch. Maybe, this time around, he decided that not cutting down at all on the partly mundane details would enhance the epic-quotient of the film. It does not. However, the trailer and characters for GoW-Part 2 are 'definite'ly more interesting.

PS: I'm a die-hard Kashyap fan and it pains me to not be able to fall in love with his movie. But this is certainly, not his best.

7/10