Dongri Ka Raja

Story:
Raja (Gashmeer) is Mansoor Ali’s (Ronit) right-hand man who wrongs him by falling in love with Shruti (Reecha) and losing focus in the killing field.

Review:
A lot of intriguing stories have come out of Dongri: from Haji Mastan’s to Dawood Ibrahim’s. The story of this movie, however, does not fall under that category.



Mansoor Ali (Ronit Roy) is Dongri’s overlord. Raja (Gashmeer Mahajani), his underling, is supposed to be your regular gangster-movie sharp shooter who thinks with his gun. Until he spots Shruti (Reecha Sinha) and the four-valved organ in his chest suddenly comes to life.

Love blossoms among other underworld cliches, and Mansoor Ali gets wind of the shiny thing distracting his one-man army. The lovers must now - you guessed it - run away in order to live happily ever after.

It is not so much the predictability of the story, but the laziness in storytelling that gets to you. The corrupt cop unleashes terror, the straitlaced one is helpless, the mother watches in silence and the don does the Sarkar hand gesture every once in a while. A devotional song plays when someone’s hospitalized, and the bulb outside the Operation Theatre lights up; the hero celebrates his kills with a Sunny Leone item song as heroes do.

Every character seems to be a dialogue writer and you end up confused as to whether you're in a movie or a mushaira. A half-decent twist comes too late in the story to salvage all that's gone south.

Ronit Roy pulls off this role on auto-pilot mode. Whereas Ashmit Patel’s performance has a fair amount of turbulences. Debutants Gashmeer and Reecha have also not had the smoothest of take-offs.

To give it a little credit, the movie has a surprising feministic subtext in the love story but it gets diluted quickly. And all you’re left with are dozens and dozens of cat-and-mouse chases.

Best case scenario: you get a decent Ronit Roy performance. Don’t kill yourself over this.