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If there’s one filmmaker who seems to hold a PhD in the gangsters of the heartland, it’s Tigmanshu Dhulia. Paan Singh Tomar and Bullett Raja were directed by him, while Gangs of Wasseypur showcased how effortless he is when enacting such parts. Ghamasaan once again puts him in familiar territory, and, for better or worse, Dhulia knows this world all too well.
The story, much like another release this Friday, Haiwaan, follows a cat-and-mouse chase. Maharaj (Arshad Warsi) is a dreaded dacoit who works in collusion with a politician, serving as his muscle to influence elections in the region. Aditya Singh (Pratik Gandhi), a Special Task Force officer, is deployed in Maharaj’s area merely for optics ahead of the elections. However, he decides to take matters into his own hands and bring Maharaj down. The manner in which he does this forms the rest of the story.
The no-nonsense, straightforward nature of Ghamasaan is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. This is perhaps the most conventional plot one can imagine for a cop-versus-criminal film. The beats are so familiar by now that the audience can often predict what is coming next even before the scene has played out. The quintessential corrupt politician who has become a staple of such films, the corrupt cop, the determined officer- you get the drift. These are all familiar archetypes that we have seen countless times before.
I keep mentioning this in my reviews nowadays, but given how much of a rarity it has unfortunately become, it is worth pointing out that the film has been shot on real locations rather than against green screens. It lends the film a sense of authenticity, transporting you to the hinterlands and establishing the mood immediately.
What Tigmanshu also gets right is the defeated manner in which the villagers have learnt to function under such oppression. There is a sense of resignation in the way they go about their lives, as though years of exploitation have stripped them of any expectation that things could ever change. The misery has seeped into their very core, reflected in their silences. It is a bleak atmosphere, and Tigmanshu does a good job of bringing that despair to the fore without over-dramatising it.
In terms of performances, Arshad Warsi moves away from his traditional comic zone and surprisingly makes for a good dacoit. Pratik Gandhi as Aditya does well. Ishita Dutta holds her own as Aditya's wife.
Overall, Ghamasaan is a film that benefits from Tigmanshu’s familiarity with the world it inhabits, even if it doesn’t always find anything particularly new to say about it. There is enough craft and authenticity here to make it a reasonably engaging watch, but not enough freshness to make it memorable.
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