Phagun (Vidyut Jammwal), Mitwa (Amit Sadh), Rizwan (Vijay Varma) and Bahadur (Kenny Basumatary) are four best friends who are also notorious criminals. The film chronicles their lives over a period of twenty years, from 1977 to 1997 to be exact. Actually, we see them much before that, as children, when they are smuggling gold and pot in Nepal.

Everyone has an off day, I guess. Respected filmmakers are no exception. Having seen writer-director-producer Tigmanshu Dhulia's earlier works, most especially Haasil, Saheb Biwi aur Gangster1 and 2 and Paan Singh Tomar, it is hard to believe that he also made this film. There is no denying though that Yaara - flimsy of script and fleeting in effect - is Dhulia's latest venture.

Friendship and betrayal is a long-running thread in Tigmanshu Dhulia's films. Yaara, based on the 2011 French crime drama A Gang Story, gives us the story of four childhood pals and their journey through the murky world of gun-running, country liquor, and the shenanigans involved in buying and selling large tracts of land for profit.

A friendship that has its foundation set in the late 1950s sustains the test of time. Yaara promises to tell that story. Essentially, Yaara is the story of four friends who leave no stones unturned to help each other. Just like other Tigmanshu Dhulia films, this film too treads back and forth between friendship and betrayal, but in a rather slow pace, which plays a spoilsport.

Fagun (Vidyut Jamwal) and Mithwa (Amit Sadh) are childhood friends. A personal tragedy transports them to borders of India-Nepal courtesy Chaman (Sanjay Mishra) and they become the youngest members of a gang. Fagun and Mithwa form a team with two other boys from the gang Rizwan (Vijay Varma) and Bahadur (Kenny Basumatari).

A beefy Vidyut Jammwal and a brooding Amit Sadh, playing the two male leads, are called upon to put in the hard yards in a film that never quite gets off the ground. Written and directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, Yaara straddles five decades - from the early 1950s to the late 1990s - and yet seems caught in a time warp.