Shanghai review

We have the likes of Yash Chopra, Karan Johar, Mahesh Bhatt, Rohit Shetty, Ekta Kapoor etc to give audience what they want but Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee are in the list of few who give Bollywood what it needs, a new direction. So Shanghai coming from Dibakar surely had high expectations for me and it reached them only partially. Of course his story telling abilities and boldness haven't faltered anywhere but what is missing from this movie is the freshness that has been associated with him in Khosla ka Ghosla, Love Sex aur Dhoka and Oye lucky.

Shanghai is in the genre which we are used to few decades back and worked big wonders. Political atrocities, conspiracies, common man fighting against them etc are already beaten to death threads. As a thriller I would rate this movie as good as Kahaani but this is the not the full potential of the director.

Abhay Deol, I know it's too soon but, can be termed as our generation's Naseeruddin Shah. He is impeccable in the role which he underplayed and of course he is always good at that. Emraan Hashmi's role is different but he could not earn any brownie points for acting nor did he screw up the role. He just could not add value to the movie except for face value which I would think worked against the movie. Kalki is just ok. Background score is the next highlight.

Overall a very good thriller but the freshness expected from Dibakar is missing.

Tail piece: I wish bollywood songs are in hindi than Marathi, Haryanvi, Punjabi etc. I could not understand the lyrics of "Bharat Matha ki jai" which created a big controversy.