Johnny Balraj enters the gigantic night club of which he is a manager, dressed as Santa. He soon disarms the guys at the door, seizes their machine guns and barges in flattening 15 odd bodyguards of Kaizad Khambhatta who has taken his lover, Rosie as hostage inside. This is Khambhatta's night club. As the guns blaze away, the sound of drums dramatize the tempo, the snare drum and the toms are played with finesse. Ditto the choke cymbals, ride and crash cymbals. Even if you don't like the sound of guns, you cannot escape the brilliant sound of drums.

Make no mistake, Bombay Velvet is an epic. Its sense of achievement is only rivaled by its ambitions. Anurag Kashyap set out to make a film that even Hollywood (read Martin Scorsese) would be proud of. One look at its visuals and you'd say he achieved his target too. But a film is much more than just its technical prowess and/or the director's vision. A key area of any commercial film, the writing, dodders in Bombay Velvet, especially in the third act as well as some important dialogue. It leaves you a little underwhelmed. It's disappointing all the more because the build-up is so fascinating and the performances are stellar. If only the writers had stayed away from the party-pooping clichs.

Sepia-tinted frames, baroque set design, outfits which can put any erstwhile or contemporary designer to shame. Anurag Kashyap's baby, Bombay Velvet, is unadulterated beauty on celluloid. However, in his creation, Kashyap suffers the fate of a Greek hero; while creating a work of art so grandiose, the hamartia creeps in and takes it to a tragic end. Bombay Velvet credits four people as its writers - Vasan Bala, Gyan Prakash, S Thanikachalam and Anurag Kashyap, and draws from Prakash's 2010 book Mumbai Fables.

It's 1969 in a Bombay of Prohibition but no inhibition, with money in the sea breeze, land sharks cutting deals and gangsters carving up competition. Ambitious Johnny Balraj (Ranbir), dreaming of becoming a big shot, is used by ruthless magnate Kaizaad Khambata (Karan) to fix business and settle scores. Johnny adores jazz singer Rosie (Anushka) and with buddy Chiman (Satyadeep), manages Kaizaad's Bombay Velvet nightclub where Rosie performs.

Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet is a visual treat. Excellently presenting the bygone era, you truly traverse into the 1960s Bombay. The smokey alleys of the red light district, mill worker unions and the rising media barons all compliment to a story that breathes Bombay's upheaval to become Mumbai in the coming years.

Right from a stunning opening sequence, 'Bombay Velvet' deftly transports you to the city in 50s and 60s. A sepia toned, nostalgic world, where gullible men entertained themselves around a boxing ring and vulnerable women were still struggling to find their place under the sun. Brilliant and painstakingly detailed production designing makes sure that you are left with no doubts about where you are being sent back to, and combine that with the heady mix of robust jazz music (music director Amit Trivedi), and the magic is half done.

We all know that Bollywood is yet another name for 'gamble'. Those in the business of making films will surely vouch for the fact that every Friday can make or break careers. Maybe that explains the reasons as to why majority of filmmakers intend to play 'safe' with their film's genre like rom-com, thriller and likes. Barring a handful of them, not many filmmakers are known for their risk taking abilities with a period film. The last period film which hit the silver screen was DETECTIVE BYOMKESH BAKSHI, which met with mixed reactions at the box-office. This week's release is yet another period drama by the name of BOMBAY VELVET.

Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet begins with a mention of Martin Scorsese's name and bears an imprint of the maverick filmmaker's style in most of its 150 minute length. An impressionable Balraj (Ranbir Kapoor) watches a James Cagney (The Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty faces) film and decides to become a 'big shot' in life. He eventually becomes one, but the cost he pays for it is almost similar to what the mainstream Hindi film heroes used to pay in the '80s. Where is the difference then? In the canvas and the mammoth pre-production. But before we get into the heart of the matter, let me introduce you to the basic storyline of the film.

The most striking aspects of Bombay Velvet are its evocative visual texture and its lush and layered sound design. But these, unfortunately, can only be external accoutrements for an ambitious film that clearly aspires to be infinitely more than the sum of its superficial parts. Meticulous is indeed the word to describe the way director Anurag Kashyap and his team recreate the eventful past of an urban sprawl that was carved out of seven separate islands and turned into one landmass through multiple reclamations from the sea.

A small-time hood with big ambitions, wanting to become 'Bambai Ka Raja'. A honey-voiced Goan girl, heart set on being a star. A city on the cusp of explosive growth, swarming with venal babus, greedy businessmen, beady-eyed landsharks and cops-in-cahoots. Based on historian Gyan Prakash's excellent original work (he's also co-written the movie), 'Bombay Velvet' is the story of all these characters trying to find their place in the late 60s Bombay.

So then there was Ranbir Kapoor - the most convincing human replica of a cupcake - in a mean black suit, his hair disheveled like potted plants in a sloppy gardener's balcony, his face scrunched in deep agony, charging at you with two machine guns blazing. If there was anything in the Bombay Velvet trailer, which was worth spilling your coffee over, this was it. The idea was unsettling for some of us, perhaps as strange as Quentin Tarantino casting Po from Kung Fu Panda as the lead in one of his films.

There are some filmmakers who scoff at the very notion of historical accuracy -- like Oliver Stone or Quentin Tarantino -- and Anurag Kashyap is one of that bunch, a man who prefers to create his own sumptuous version of history. Bombay Velvet looks to be, then, his very own Bob Fosse-meets-Scarface take on what might have been, instead of bothering with what really was. An indicator of the same lies in the opening credits, as they claim to be 'introducing Karan Johar' whereas that particular director first acted in the most successful Hindi film of all time.