Meeruthiya Gangsters review: Boys go wild in Qadri's film but the audiences will be restless

Direction: Zeishan Qadri
Cast: Jaideep Ahlawat, Aakash Dahiya, Jatin Sarna, Shadab Kamal, Vansh Bhardwaj, Chandrachoor Rai, Nushrat Bharucha, Sanjai Mishra, Mukul Dev

Ratings:

Zeishan Qadri's directorial debut centres on six small town boys with big aspirations. They are rebels without a cause. They are wannabe gangsters who shoot but don't kill. A few are fools in love. They all want to get rich without working too hard. But what makes the good-for-nothing fellows fun in Qadri's eyes is that they don't want to accomplish so only through illegitimate means. It makes them partly amusing and largely annoying.

There's not much going on in Meeruthiya Gangsters other than a sextet -Nikhil (Jaideep Ahlawat), Amit (Aakash Dahiya), Sanjay Foreigner (Jatin Sarna), Sunny (Shadab Kamal), Gagan (Vansh Bhardwaj), Rahul (Chandrachoor Rai) - coming up with same-old plans to mint money. For over 90 minutes, we see them try to woo girls, sit around and scheme, kidnap, intimidate, shoot, fight, drink and lose their cool. The irony is that they initially need the money to land jobs which will give them money. The film trudges along with the guys getting into one troubling situation after another. Their shenanigans continue until law catches up with them in the form of inspector RK Singh (Mukul Dev).

The female actors here have little to do other than look pretty and stand smiling next to their bae. Lest you forget the film is set in Meerut, UP, we hear women being referred to as "laundiya" and "Russian salad". Even the sole remotely interesting female character, Mansi (Bharucha), who is Gagan's girlfriend and stands up to the guys, is forsaken to focus on the so-called gangsters. The six leading actors are treated equally but it is Ahlawat as Nikhil the self-appointed leader of the gang, Dahiya as Amit, who especially enjoys embarrassing his friends, and Sarna's blond-haired Sanjay who is desperate to get married, that stand out with their performances.

It's hard to not see the influence of Anurag Kashyap, who enjoys credits not only as a presenter but even as an editor. Kashyap's style here sees a few slo-mos and a pivotal gun fight sequence unfolding in fast motion. But these techniques don't make for a gripping watch. Instead it is Qadri, who wrote and acted in Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur, who occasionally shows promise and lifts the film with a few amusing scenarios in which the lads pull each other's legs. It's a way to not only highlight the camaraderie but also lighten the mood. One memorable scene sees the friends look for the missing part of their friend's ear; another sees Nikhil call a truce with the police by waving his white underwear. But other than these few scenes, there is little makes you root for the young men. What drives them to become lawless citizens? What's their ultimate purpose? Qadri isn't able to lure viewers into their world.

Given that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is on a run of making movies set in his state tax free, it'd be interesting to see if Meeruthiya Gangsters which celebrates the roguish ways of its young male protagonists gets a thumbs up.