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Johnny Gaddaar : Movie Review
28th Sept 2007 23.45 IST
By Nikhil Kumar

It doesn’t give you the comfort of reclining back and munching on popcorns. Johnny Gaddaar is very much a clever, cerebral and well-made thriller that requires you to sit up and use your brains.

Even though the inspirations the movie’s director Sriram Raghavan draws from are apparent in the film, not once does ‘Johnny Gaddaar’ look like a rehashed product. The movie’s pace, the unraveling of the story, the unexpected twists, turns and spirals keep you glued to the screen for the most part of the film’s running time. And yes, the movie’s climax is its masterstroke.

The film tells the story of a gang of five. The eldest of them is Seshadri ( Dharmendra ), an ex-gangster living with the memories of his dead wife. The youngest is Vikram ( Neil Nitin Mukesh ), a stock speculator for whom money is everything.

Other members of the gang are Prakash ( Vinay Pathak ) who is a gambler, Shardul ( Zakir Hussain) who runs a lounge bar, and Daya (Shiva) who is a robust wrestler.

The gang gets an opportunity to make a fortune in four days. The stakes are high but so is the reward. Things go fine until one of them decides to double cross the others and flee with the entire money they had raised together. Not just this, the traitor manages to slip back in the gang without anyone suspecting him of treason. Dead bodies pile up as the vengeful partners try to find out the gaddaar.

The remarkable thing about ‘Johnny Gaddaar’ is that it is not just stylish in looks but it also has enough substance. The script is tight, the plot is immensely interesting, the dialogues are well penned, songs are kept minimal and Ragahvan’s shot-composition is impeccable. Seldom do so many things fall together in place in a movie.

Raghavan only seems to have gotten better after his Ek Haseena Thi . The director laces ‘Johnny Gaddaar’ with inspirations from James Hadley Chase novels, Amitabh Bachchan-starrer ‘Parwana’ and the late Vijay Anand’s movies. And Raghavan makes these inspirations explicit. Besides telling the story interestingly, Raghavan also extracts good performances from the star cast.

Newcomer Neil Nitin Mukesh (legendary singer Mukesh’s grandson) proves his reliability to shoulder a movie in his very first attempt at acting. The guy’s got looks and his own original style. Just a little bit of honing would make him a star material.

Dharmendra gives a good performance. Vinay Pathak is in his elements again. The actor is a bundle of talent. Rimi Sen has an important role and she delivers it with conviction. Zakir Hussain is terrific.

In a nutshell, ‘Johnny Gaddaar’ is an entertaining thriller. The movie has a number of engrossing sequences and unpredictable twists.

Definitely worth a watch.

Rating: ***

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Johnny Gaddaar
Sriram Raghavan
Dharmendra
Neil Nitin Mukesh
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Ek Haseena Thi
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