Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 1 (2012)
Directed by Anurag Kashyap
In 1970s India, Sardar Khan vows to take revenge on the man who killed his father decades earlier.
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5 films that influenced Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 1
What critics say influenced Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 1
Sardar’s downfall, which ends Part 1, is one of the moments where Kashyap lets it all rip: ambushed in his car while stopping for gas (the moment at which Gangs most echoes The Godfather), Sardar takes a rain of bullets, then staggers forth in slo-mo and fills the screen, blood-soaked in front of a blazing sun.
Unlike Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” Faizal, in taking the reins from his father, rules more through fear than through sense.
Oozing visual style, laced with tight and often blackly comic dialogue, bolstered by tasty performances and a driving neo-Bollywood soundtrack, this Tarantino-tinged Bihari take on The Godfather has what it takes to cross over from the Indian domestic and Diaspora markets to reach out to action-loving, gore-tolerant theatrical and auxiliary genre audiences worldwide.
This epic crime saga sprawls across seven decades and three generations of characters—like all three parts of The Godfather rolled into one, with an injection of boisterous Bollywood flavour.
Shahid’s son Sardar (Manoj Bajpayee) vows vengeance, a promise that he puts aside when one of his sons, the oddly-named Danish, marries the sister of Ramadhir’s right hand man Sultan, but those in the Singh clan see this as a calculated plot to move in on their territory and they plan a hit right out of The Godfather.
In fact, “Wasseypur” steadily builds momentum throughout its daunting five and a half hours, culminating with two spectacular action sequences, including a hospital shootout that could hold its own with John Woo’s “Hard Boiled.”
Everything is exactly as it should be, storywise, and the total is an astonishing feat, worthy of discussion alongside Coppola's first two “Godfather” films, or Leone's “ Once Upon a Time in America .”
Producer Adi Shankar has described “Gangs” as “an important and monumental movie for my people,” comparing it to other influential global hits from developing nations, like South Korea’s “Oldboy,” Hong Kong’s “Infernal Affairs” or Brazil’s “City of God.” He’s trying to hype the picture, of course, but that gives you some idea of how it’s seen in India.
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Producer Adi Shankar has described “Gangs” as “an important and monumental movie for my people,” comparing it to other influential global hits from developing nations, like South Korea’s “Oldboy,” Hong Kong’s “Infernal Affairs” or Brazil’s “City of God.” He’s trying to hype the picture, of course, but that gives you some idea of how it’s seen in India.