Review : Gumraah : Engrossing whodunnit!

The ‘remake’ phase in the Hindi film industry is in full swing and the latest to join the bandwagon is Aditya Roy Kapur and Mrunal Thakur starrer Gumraah. In way there are quite a few movies made under this title, Gumraah, which means misguide or astray in English. Ashok Kumar, Mala Sinha, Sunil Dutt starrer Gumraah was released in 1963 and was a runaway hit. In 1964 Gumraah was made with Reena Roy and Subhash Ghai in the lead and no one remembers it. In 1993 Sanjay Dutt and Sridevi starrer Gumraah garnered a good audience support and now comes one more Gumraah (2023) which is an engrossing whodunnit movie. Incidentally it’s a remake of a Tamil film Thadam. It’s almost a copy paste version of the original and is a decent watch.

The movie starts with a murder done by the lead actor and the crime drama unfolds interestingly when his twin surfaces and both are suspects. Arjun (Aditya Roy Kapur) and Sooraj aka Ronnie (Aditya Roy Kapur) are identical twins, living contrasting lives, are arrested by the police for a murder. To investigate this homicide, enters a young and dashing IPS officer Shivani Mathur (Mrunal Thakur). The local police too are investigating, led by ACP Dhiren Yadav (Ronit Bose Roy). Things keep getting complicated as the needle of suspicion is pointed at both the brothers, who couldn’t see eye to eye with each other. Shivani thinks that Arjun is innocent while Yadav wants to trap Arjun to settle personal score. There are back stories of Arjun and Sooraj and the story tries to justify their behaviour through that. What transpires later to pinpoint the culprit forms the crux of the narration.

Since Gumraah is a remake, the story does not offer anything new and the screenplay is kept pacy keeping viewers invested in the proceedings. Though the movie loses path in between, another twist is thrown in to bring it back on track. The direction (Vardhan Ketkar) is taut and his storytelling with twists and turns holds ground. Dialogues are good at times. Music is hummable and background score adds to the proceedings on screen. The production values are good and cinematography is good too. Aditya Roy Kapur plays his double role convincingly and the two characters look separate is a sign of he being a good actor. His action is praiseworthy and he’ll be loved by his female fans in shirtless scenes. Mrunal Thakur plays her cop role convincingly and despite not much scope offered by the writers, she delivers a convincing performance. Vedika Pinto, who plays love interest of Aditya (Arjun), looks beautiful and refreshing and shines in her limited screen time. Ronit Roy, Deepak Karle (as Roonie’s buddy Chaddi) are good too.

Gumraah has an engaging plot and twists and turns in the film make it watchable on big screen.

***

Keerti Kadam.