Don't Give Your Money To Meeruthiya Gangsters

One of the few things that made Meeruthiya Gangsters something to watch out for was the endorsement of Anurag Kashyap, whose Gangs of Wasseypur was written by Zeishan Quadri, the director of this film. The Dev D director was vocal about how rock-solid the film is and Kashyapians, or the infamous cult of Anurag Kashyap, were eager to see what could have been a Wasseypur-like crime sage set in Meerut.

However, make no mistake. Meeruthiya Gangster is a lazy film with no attention paid to its writing. In fact, the screenplay looks largely improvised by the actors who clutter this pseudo, trying-to-be-clever crime drama. Which may not itself had been a bad thing if it helped in taking the film's story forward. But here, there's nothing that moves. It's like running violently in circles and hoping to cover a greater distance.



A bunch of college students run the city of Meerut amok with random kidnappings and even more random ransoms. The film is practically a series of kidnappings and there comes a time when the cast ends up in jail. Interestingly, sitting through the film is no different than spending time in prison. You only repent.


Characters deliver pointless one-liners with the frequency of a Virar local, and unlike the trains, the lines run out of steam in the first hour itself. After that, so much monotony sets in that they even kidnap their second victim in the exact same fashion as the first. Only the ransom amount is 10 times higher!

Why exactly are we watching this film again? Does it tell you anything about the state of contemporary Meerut? Like a Masaan managed to do with Benares? Does it take you inside the psyche and reveal the true motivations of why the youth chooses a life of crime? Does it boast of a stylised direction to hold your attention? No. This one is disappointing on all levels and the cast - a bunch of relatively unknown actors (other than Sanjay Mishra and Mukul Dev). 


However, Meeruthiya does have some North Indian flavour and an oddly pleasing rustic charm that gels well with the chemistry of the rookie criminals (to the point of homoerotic levels)


Especially inspiring is Shadab Kamal's (BA Pass) performance as he plays a perennially zoned-out criminal who'd pump in a bullet even if he didn't intend to kill somebody. Think Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, take out the sophistication, and slip in wannabe Pulp Fiction-like dialogue with a dash of Aaram Nagar humour... if that makes sense to you, you'll come close to liking this crime caper. Else, you'll come out just having witnessed an episode in the life of small-time crooks and their eventual fall, something you wouldn't really care less about.

If the crime isn't spectacularly orchestrated, their fall is even more boring. In this case, the crime is the film itself, the boredom being its execution.