Kaminey movie review

Kaminey is an anti–cliché film, a film that is not bothered whether it is mainstream or art house but a film that is committed to enter unexplored cinematic representations.Kaminey does that with consummate ease.

45 seconds into narration, it reaches a moment of crescendo when the screen is freeze framed whilst a chase sequence and theme song playing .And there are plenty of such moments in the next two hours. Kaminey takes all the conventional storylines and screen tricks used until now and tweaked, and in some places upended it in an enviable manner. The brothers hate each other and there is no coughing mother or foster dad to bring them together. Instead what brings them together is fate; one chasing love, another chasing money.

Yet it couldn’t stay away from one cliché - all the cynical goons have daddy issues.

But credit should be given where it deserves; and in this case richly and deservingly so. With fiery dialogues, great metaphors and apt ,dingy locations to supplement the narrative, innovative lyrics and lens work that capture details which may escape attention the first time ,this film demands attention .The nice thing about Kaminey is that it is respecting the audience’s intelligence by not bothering to run sub -titles when there is frenetic verbal exchange in languages other than Hindi. The film reposes enough faith in its treatment to not to do so.

Till the intermission, the story of lisping and stuttering brothers run parallely ,and then congruently just after that and subsequently leads to conflict and clash of interest over the possession of a contraband loaded guitar. In a world where every soul has himself put a price at which he can sell his soul, deceit and double crossing is rampant ,slowly the brothers Charlie and Guddu realise that all they have is each other. The plot is complex with a lot of hyenas flocking in to get their pound of booty and that includes bookies, policemen, wannabe corporators and foreign drug dealers, all happy to move past the morally grey area towards darker hues.
It all ends in a bloody conflict resolving shoot out, with almost everybody shooting rounds of bullets, amidst chaos and greed.
With songs penned by Gulzar, the film had an outstanding collection of soundtracks that were underutilised especially, the title track, which truly deserved its full running time. The bits and pieces actors played their parts that contributed to the look and feel. Although Shahid Kapoor is sensational and Priyanka Chopra surprisingly ok, it is a Vishal Bhardwaj showcase alone.


It’s a great little milestone in contemporary Indian cinema, but for all the nice things sadly, Kaminey is lesser than the sum of its parts.