Prateek Entertainments, Friday To Friday Entertainers & Media and Anurag Kashyap’s Meeruthiya Gangsters (UA) is the story of a group of friends in Meerut, who get sucked into the world of crime as it gives them easy money.
Nikhil (Jaideep Ahlawat), Amit (Aakash Dahiya), Sanjay Foreigner (Jatin Sarna), Sunny (Shadab Kamal), Rahul Challenger (Chandrachoor Rai) and Gagan (Vansh Bhardwaj) are good for nothing. They while away their time doing nothing worthwhile. Sanjay Foreigner is in love with Alka (Soundarya Sharma) whose father is against the relationship, mainly because Sanjay has no means of livelihood. Gagan has a girlfriend, Mansi (Nushrat Bharucha), who helps the friends in kidnapping two of the people from the company she works for, by leaking information about them. The game plan is to kidnap a person and release him after taking ransom money from his family.
Before this, Amit had used his proximity to Pooja (Ishita Sharma) to get jobs for himself and his friends but that ploy did not work. Sanjay Foreigner has a maternal uncle (Sanjay Mishra) who lives in NOIDA. The uncle introduces the group of boys to a rich businessman who asks them to come with a sizeable amount of capital so that he can initiate them into business. It is also to collect money for building the capital that the boys take to crime.
Zeishan Quadri’s story is not novel but he succeeds in getting the atmosphere of Meerut and NOIDA right. The screenplay, written by Gibran Noorani, Pradeep Atluri, Gunjan Saxena and Zeishan Quadri, is fast-paced and keeps the audience engrossed. But, of course, the point of lack of novelty applies to the screenplay just as it does to the story. Films about students going wayward have been made many times before this and, therefore, this one does not have much novelty. Yet, the several turns and twists in the drama are interesting. Probably, the best part about the script are Zeishan Quadri’s dialogues which are very impressive and effective. The words used are so appropriate and the style in which the dialogues are mouthed by the characters is so real that the viewer gets the feeling that he is actually in Meerut.
Jaideep Ahlawat acts with effortless ease and does a fine job. Aakash Dahiya is effective in the role of Amit. He plays the carefree character well. Jatin Sarna makes an excellent debut in the role of Sanjay Foreigner. He is absolutely fantastic in the scene in which he orchestrates his own shootout. Shadab Kamal performs ably as Sunny. Chandrachoor Rai plays Rahul Challenger with conviction. Vansh Bhardwaj is good as Gagan. Nushrat Bharucha leaves a mark in the role of Mansi. Sanjay Mishra has his moments as Sanjay Foreigner’s uncle. Mukul Dev makes his presence felt as police officer R.K. Singh. Brijendra Kala is outstanding as Jayantilal. Malkhan makes a promising debut as Jagdish Tyagi. Soundarya Sharma is natural in her debut role. She does justice to the character of Alka. Ishita Sharma lends able support as Pooja. Rajeev Gaur Singh (as Aniket Sharma) and Suparna Krishna (as Aniket Sharma’s wife) lend good support. Shrikant Verma (as the country head), Ranjan Arneja (as the zonal head), Rocky (as Avinash), Raja Sharma (as SSP), Sumit Sethi (as Sumit DJ), Siddharth (as Alka’s father), Virender Sharma (as Alka’s uncle), Gurleen Rawal (as Mamta) and the others do as desired.
Zeishan Quadri’s direction is good, given that this is his debut directorial venture. His composition and picturisation of action scenes is particularly imaginative. He deserves credit for extracting good work from out of his actors. But the climax is abrupt and leaves the viewers dissatisfied. Siddhant Madhav and Vivek Kar’s music is fair while Siddhant Madhav’s background music is nice. Lyrics (Kumaar, K. Juneja and Arafat Mehmood) go well with the film’s mood. Ravi Akhade and Shireen Quadri’s choreography is passable. Naren Gedia’s camerawork is good. Action scenes and stunts have been well composed by Harpal Singh and Ravi Kumar. Mrinal Das and Alok Halder’s production designing adds to the realistic atmosphere. Editing (by Anurag Kashyap and Ashish Arjun Gaikar) is crisp.
On the whole, Meeruthiya Gangsters is entertaining in parts and has performances, dialogues, atmosphere and ambience as its plus points but an oft-repeated drama is a big minus point. It will go largely unnoticed despite the good points. It has some chance in parts of U.P. only.
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