The movie was released without much fanfare, but it created a host of acclaimed reviews that I had to take notice and make effort to see this movie.

The story is about 5 crooks  Seshadri (Dharmendra) is the respected ringleader, Prakash (Vinay Pathak) is the casino-club owner, Shardul (Zakir Hussain) is the businessman, Shiva (Daya Shetty) is the strong man and Vikram aka Vicky (Neil Nitin Mukesh) is an aspiring young man who wants to become rich quickly and he plays Johnny Gaddar. All of them put Rs.50 lakhs to buy a consignment from a Bangalore based Police Inspector Kalyan (Govind Namdeo). Shiva is sent to deliver the money from Bombay to Bangalore via train. Vicky plans to rob the money so that he can run away with Shardul's beautiful wife Twinkle (Rimi Sen). In doing so he kills Shiva. I would not tell you the whole story here, otherwise you will loose the fun of watching the movie.

The movie is an edge of the seat thriller. We know who is the killer and are eager to see what would happen next. The Director Sriram Raghavan maintains the suspense till the very last frame of the movie and remains ahead of audiences.

I read in the reviews comparisons being made of Sriram Raghavan to Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction style narrative. I agree to that. This movie brings to Indian cinema this fine element of suspense and beautiful execution through fine direction. Truly Sriram Raghavan has arrived. His first venture Ek Hasina Thi was good, but was too restrictive form of revengeful story telling and after interval became not so engrossing film. But with Johnny Gaddar Sriram is in full tempo. Not only he has written the movie with great skill but directed it too, extracting fine performances from his cast.

It is marvelous to see Dharmendra portray the role of respected ringleader (a big relief  otherwise Amitabh has sadly- overcaptured all the elderly roles of film industry); apart from him everyone else has acted fabulously. One passing reference to the new kid in the block Neil Nitin Mukesh and he has delivered the goods above average in his first movie. I think the casting of him as an innocent looking youngest member of the gang was an winning ace from Sriram.

I would also like to mention the passing references made in Johnny Gaddar of contributions made by Hindi cinema through several decades, by adding old songs,music in background, adding dialogues that refer to some movie, character, actors, movies running on TV etc. Very well integrated!

Lastly, the inspiration of the movie title  must be from Johny Mera Naam! Hats of to Sriram. I look forward to his next movie Happy Birthday. I would be a bit liberal to this movie's rating and give it my max!

(Stars 8 out of 10)