Raman Raghav 2.0

The title of this film comes with uncomfortable memories of the stories that one has heard of this ruthless, unhinged serial killer in the 60's who went about smashing heads of the homeless and slum dwellers, just because he felt like it. This serial killer, who is said to have eliminated 41 lives, had spread so much terror that the city would have no soul roaming out on the street after dark, till he was arrested.

A terrific take on inhumanity and nihilism brings Anurag Kashyap back to his known helm of affairs. The velvet of Bombay gets luridly, dark, grimy and terrific in this inspired on screen account of the notorious Mumbai psychopath killer Raman Raghav (Pysco Raman) who terrorized Mumbai streets during the mid sixties.

We all know and are aware of the fact that Bollywood is not new to genre of thrillers. Almost every second or third release in Bollywood belongs to the thriller genre. This week's release RAMAN RAGHAV 2.0 also falls in the same category, however unlike the plethora of thrillers that tend to focus on the supernatural this one is a psychological thriller.

After the disastrous Bombay Velvet, maverick filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, known for making gritty crime films with a dash of dark humour, decided to do what he does best and the result is Raman Raghav 2.0, a film that fans of the director were waiting for. Starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Ramanna, a serial killer inspired by the infamous Raman Raghav, who had terrorized Mumbai during the 60s, the film takes you on a journey through the mean and dirty back-alleys of Mumbai as Ramanna goes on a killing spree while a chain-smoking, coke-snorting cop Raghavan (Vicky Kaushal) sets out on his trail.

There's a lot to like about Raman Raghav 2.0 and there's an equal amount to hate. It all depends on how much of an appetite you have for darkness and destruction. Don't think of it in terms of a Ramsay movie or The Conjuring, the horror in this film is all psychological and emotional. The sight of Nawazuddin Siddiqui's Raman stalking his prey, hunting it down and killing it in all bloody glory will make the most cold-blooded viewers squirm. The darkness and malice in RR2 haunts you, it affects you and it makes you feel sick.

Raman Raghav as the name suggests is Anurag Kashyap's take on the mass murders that happened in the mid 90s at the hands of serial killer who operated under this name. The story revolves around Nawazuddin Siddiqui who plays the killer and Vicky Kaushal who is the drug addicted cop that chases him. It is a typical Kashyap fare with his stamp all over it. The camera work, lighting of the frames, writing and background score all scream out Kashyap. The first half holds your interest as you watch Nawaz unravel and show his dark side through his various killings.

When you go for an Anurag Kashyap film, you know that you are stepping into a gory and sinful world. And with his latest directorial venture, Kashyap has made sure he exceeds your expectations with such gruesome cruelty, it is matched only by Ugly (2013). Raman Raghav 2.0 is not about how life treats human beings, it is about a Satan reincarnate who walks among humans. The protagonists here take pleasure out of hurting others, and brutally so.

Anurag Kashyap is back where he belongs and there is nothing remotely velvety in the director's felicitous return to his creative comfort zone. In Raman Raghav 2.0, he gives the go-by to the lawman versus law-breaker binary, the normative pivot of crime dramas. The film zeroes in on a psychopath's chilling battle of wits, and nerves, with a sleep-deprived, drug-dependent cop in the seedy back alleys of present-day Mumbai. The exercise yields a gripping, visceral genre film that intermittently strays into fuzziness only to lift itself up forcefully enough not to lose momentum.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is one of the finest actors of our times. There is no argument about that. But too often -- including in films that have not been released, we have seen him as an angry man (Patang, Firaq, Dekh Indian Circus); or a creep, albeit with a heart (Liar's Dice, Miss Lovely, Talaash); or a dark criminal (Monsoon Shootout, Gangs of Wasseypur, Badlapur); or just a sleazy man (Haraamkhor). There is a decent man and even a comical Siddiqui in films like The Lunchbox and Bajrangi Bhaijaan.

In one of the most telling scenes in writer-director Anurag Kashyap's Raman Raghav 2.0, a man assaults his girlfriend in the presence of two policemen. The cops have been assigned as her personal security guards, to protect her from a notorious serial killer, yet they watch wordlessly when her own boyfriend roughs her up. It is a powerful cinematic moment in a nation that has socially (and in some instances, legally) divided violence against women into categories of "acceptable" and "unacceptable". Gangrape by slum dwellers: unacceptable. Marital rape: acceptable.

That cops and crooks are basically two sides of the same coin is a familiar schtick played out in the movies. That's what Raman Raghav 2.0, fashioned as a psychological thriller, sets out to do and leaves us with a film that becomes a tough trudge, not just because of its sheer bestiality, but because its road to perdition is rocky.

Director Anurag Kashyap treads familiar ground with Raman Raghav 2.0. It is overwhelmingly dark with deep macabre undertones. Kashyap gets the moral pendulum oscillating between his prime characters - one a cold-blooded murderer and another who has all the makings of becoming one. He subtly draws parallels between the personalities of his men who stand on opposite sides of the spectrum. Raman beautifully puts it in one of the film's early scenes that after all, he and Raghav are the same people but the police uniform validates or criminalises their actions.