Film review of Shootout at Wadala.

Films being made based on real life incidents,have become a common trend today.Director Sanjay Gupta,

has implemented this trend of making movies,into his recent work,titled as "Shootout at Wadala".Based on the book "Dongri to Dubai" by Hussain Zaidi,this movie is a bollywood crime thriller,which dramatizes the first ever registered shootout encounter by Mumbai police,on January 11,1982,near the Ambedkar College Junction in Wadala,Mumbai,where notorious gangster Manya Surve was shot dead.

The film was released world wide on 3rd May,and did fair business at box office.

Now,starting with the review,I would like to focus on following points:

Title - The title of the movie is used as a symbol or logo to dramatize the events that took place during and before the shootout and focuses on the strategies made by Mumbai Police,to eliminate a notorious gangster

named Manya Surve. Manya is shown to be a good hearted guy,who gradually becomes a notorious gangster due to circumstances,which force him to do so.The title,although quite commonly predictable and not extraordinary or out of league,is able to give a glance of the subject matter of the movie and the series of events that took place at that time.Hence,the title in itself is able to establish it's purpose.

Story Line - The movie starts with an injured Manya(John Abraham) being taken to a local hospital accompanied by ACP Afaaque Baaghran(Anil Kapoor),and Manya narrating his story to him.The scene then

shifts to the beginning,where it all started. Manya a studious,innocent,good hearted student,whose brother is a gangster,is arrested for helping his brother in a murder,while in reality,he was just trying to save him.In jail,his brother gets killed,and he befriends another prisoner named Munir(Tusshar Kapoor),thereafter killing his brother's assassin.Then one day,he along with Munir,escapes from jail,and after geting into a feud with a powerful gangster named Zubair Imtiaz Haksar(Manoj Bajpai) and his brother Dilawar(Sonu Sood), forms his own gang of criminals,thus spreading terror across Mumbai.He slowly emerges out to be a potential

threat to the reigning gangsters.He eliminates Bhaskar(Ranjeet),the don who killed his brother,as well as the inspector who had arrested him.However,his ruthless attitude grabs police attention and he gets added to the list of criminals,police want to eliminate.Under the orders of the then police commissioner,ACP Baaghran along with Inspector Raja Ambat(Ronit Roy),using Vidya Joshi(Kangna Ranaut),Manya's girlfriend,as a token,shoots Manya in a registered shootout encounter,near the Ambedkar College Junction at Wadala,Mumbai.

The scene then comes back to present,and Manya is shown to succumb to his injuries,finally leading to his death.

Acting - John Abraham in the role of the notorious gangster Manya Surve,does impress the audience.He moves out of his stereotype action roles,and proves his mettle in acting too.He had to prepare well for this role,and had visited Manya's classmates to get a closer idea about him.

Anil Kapoor,as the tough inspector who always abides by his rules and laws,and punishes wrong doers whenever necessary,without even caring for his own life,also stands up to the mark.His performance in the film has been one of his strongest performances ever.For the role,he had to prepare a body to match that of Abraham.

Kangna,as Vidya Joshi fails to impress.Although,in some scenes her expressions seem suitably well,but worthless in others.She could not make out any difference in her expressions,as required for her character.Her expressions as well as dialogue delivery seemed to be the same every time,be it for an angry,sad or joyous scene,with no depth or style changes in it.

Ronit Roy,Sonu Sood and Manoj Bajpai carry their work well over their shoulders.However,in case of Tusshar kapoor,he still needs to learn acting and grow up.

Action and Romance - The action of this movie is well choreographed and has no strong violence associated with it.However,in the scene where Manya kills the inspector,by burning him to death,a little of violence is shown,but that mainly,to demonstrate the ruthlessness of the character,Manya. The action scenes

are realistic and not unreal,unlike some old masala movies.They display the type of action that mainly occurs between street thugs and are choreographed in a very logical way.

The romantic and lusty relation that Manya and Vidya share in this movie,needs a special mention.Both John and Kangna,have been able to ignite the passion required for their roles onscreen,thus setting the silver screen on fire.Moreover,the director has given love and sex equal priority and in the intense lovemaking scenes,we get to see a glimpse of it.

Music - The music of the film is composed by Anu Malik,and accompanied by Mustafa Zahid,Anand Raj Anand. The movie comprises of 7 tracks,amongst which three are item songs.The item song Laila,featuring former Indo-Canadian porn star Sunny Leone,in revealing outfits,is the most popular song of the movie and is able to raise temperatures.The other two featuring Priyanka Chopra and Sophie Chowdhury could not be so much popular in either ways.The romantic track in the movie also gained reputation.However,the pace of music is a little slow and the songs seem to be prolonged in the way.

Controversies - Prior to release,the film had been a subject matter of a large number of controversies.It is quite obvious for such a film based on a story involving so many gangsters to ignite controversies.Deviation of facts from the original incident was also rumoured to have taken place.But,in spite of all that,the controversies were taken care of and the film was released after a short delay with no such big problem to handle.

Overall,the acting of John Abraham and Anil Kapoor gets a rating of 8/10 from me,but the whole movie gets 7.5/10.