Mumbai Saga review: John Abraham, Emraan Hashmi film is a jaded re-retread of familiar ground

A complete 12 months after the lockdown, I used to be all set to get pleasure from a full-on masala movie — dangerous guys, bursting machismo, bristling weapons, and rhyming dialogues. However Sanjay Gupta’s Mumbai Saga is one more jaded re-retread of acquainted floor.

We’ve misplaced rely of the actioners full of Mumbai bhaus and bhais, loudly declaring their allegiance to the Supremo and his Sena, wading into conflicts between old-time mill house owners and new property sharks, and the expansion of the mob, parcelling out town between them. The one solution to justify one other iteration is to infuse it with freshness. What’s that?

Amartya Rao (John Abraham) is thrown off the straight and slim, solely to embrace the dangerous life. Mentors and rivals encompass him. There’s the jovial Gaitonde (Amol Gupte) who controls his gang from inside a jail cell. There’s the highly effective Bhau (Mahesh Manjrekar) who resembles the actual life Bala Saheb within the seems to be division. Simply in case we didn’t get it, he’s proven sketching cartoon figures. Geddit now? There’s the ‘Harvard-returned’ son (Samir Soni) of a mill-owner, who has a watch on massive cash. And there are Amartya’s devoted lieutenants (Rohit Roy and Shaad Randhawa), one quantity old-time hood (Gulshan Grover), loyal spouse (Kajal Aggarwal), chota bhai (Prateik Babbar) who’s compelled to develop up ‘shareef’ however has a yen for the wild facet.

When a smart-mouthed encounter specialist (Emraan Hashmi) reveals up, issues begin to unravel, and we all know the place all of that is headed. In Gupta’s higher movies, the dangerous guys was extra fascinating, the motion was stylish, and there’s been nobody higher than him to organise that basic cash shot — a row of sharp guys in black, strolling slo mo in the direction of us. I can watch Kaante once more only for that one scene.

Aside from Gupte, who’s clearly having fun with himself, reminding certainly one of related roles he has performed earlier than, there actually is nobody who’s self-aware sufficient to hold off this saga. Grover and Shetty, a lot at residence in this sort of movie, come and go too quickly. Abraham, pink tilak firmly on brow, stalks impassively via the movie; the remainder, regardless of themselves, are simply eye glaze. Even the traces don’t assist. Pattern this, from Amartya to a baddie: ‘Yeh lakshman rekha Sita ne paar kari toh Ramayan, aur tumne toh Mahabharat’. The baddie cowers and runs. So ought to have we.