Ram Gopal Verma Ka Department

Ram Gopal Verma Ka Department

Department by RGV

        The first word that comes out for this film is “disappointment”. After watching Department, I seriously doubt whether he is the same director who excelled with the underworld gangster movies like Shiva, Satya and Company. RGV carved out a niche for himself, but lost his direction midway. After producing and directing duds like Agyat, James and the unbeatable Ram Gopal Verma Ki Aag, we all expected he will say adieu to direction.

         But here he makes a comeback. This time armed with stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt. We expected at least some substance here as RGV has given us the Sarkars with BigB. But nothing works out here in this failed experiment. It is just another extension of his done-to-death gangster genre, offering nothing new for the viewers.

Rana Dagubatti and Amitabh Bachchan in Department

       It’s a ‘good cop-bad cop’ story depicting the same old mafia-police nexus in Mumbai underworld. The storyline remains pretty predictable and boring most of the time. BigB plays gangster-turned-politician who tries to influence the good cop (Rana Dagubatti) by offering him a gift. Sanjay Dutt plays the bad cop who works for another mafia don, and tries to include the good cop in his corrupt world. The good cop refuses but declares a peaceful co-existence. How the story moves ahead with all the politics and gang wars, is largely foreseeable for an RGV flick.

Rana Dagubatti and Sanjay Dutt

        The gory images, the mindless gun-battle sequences add nothing extra to the numb narrative. The cinematography, which RGV claims to be a novel style, is nothing more than a torture for your eyes. It should not be taken for granted or abused just because the technology allows you to do so. Weird angles, unnecessary track-shots, ugly extreme close-ups with a fish eye lens, create nausea and induce migraine. It has been shot without a DoP and RGV started this trend with his movie Not a Love Story. The Director now is totally obsessed with this style of filming with different varieties of digital cameras with different formats. We have seen RGV’s unusual camera angles in his previous films as well, but most of them were creatively and aesthetically done, e.g. Company (Cinematography by Hemant Chaturvedi) and Sarkar (Cinematography by Amit Roy). This is the reason why a film largely depends on the DoP.

Amitabh Bachchan in Department

           Now-a-days, we rarely see anyone coming up with a riveting, powerhouse performance in a gangster genre flick, as examples set by Manoj Bajpai in Satya or Vivek Oberoi in Company. BigB tries to resemble a gangster-turned politician, but his stature is too huge to justify a nasty Neta. His deep baritone provides a ray of hope for a meaty role, but we never found one. Sanjay Dutt plays the bad cop role well but cannot come out of being stereotypical. But somehow he manages to balance between his double characteristics. Rana Dagubatti does nothing more than flexing his muscles and unleashes his anger and bullets on dirty gangsters. His expressions are a mixture of wooden and cold. The only one, who is worth mentioning is Vijay Raaz in a smaller role, but well performed, may be because he cannot help it.

           Overall, it is a failed pointless experiment by RGV, looks as if he does not care about the box-office collections and makes the movies he wants to make. But that does not provide him with a “License to kill” the mood of the viewers, and this is a heinous crime. A bunch of filthy blood-splattering gun-battle sequences put together does not make a film. On the top of that the nauseous Camera movements and angles add to the agony. We request RGV to have mercy on the movie-goers and spare us from his disasters.