13 years of Gangs of Wasseypur: Meet the gangster films that ran so Anurag Kashyap's film could kill

As Gangs of Wasseypur turns 13, we revisit five gritty Indian crime dramas that laid the foundation for its raw, realistic, and genre-defining storytelling.

Recalibrating filmmakers' approaches to violence, language, and storytelling grounded in real India, Anurag Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) did more than just revolutionise the Indian gangster cinema. Coal mafia politics and generational vengeance were just two of the themes explored in the film, which gave rise to a new genre of crime dramas that were grounded in reality but unabashedly violent.

A still from Gangs of Wasseypur

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In honour of the film's 13th anniversary, we take a look back at five seminal Indian crime dramas that were either inspiration for or served as a precursor to “Gangs of Wasseypur”

Gangster films if you like Gangs of Wasseypur

Satya

Satya chronicled the criminal underworld of Mumbai in the late 1990s, long before Gangs of Wasseypur introduced gang warfare to Dhanbad. The story of a good guy who becomes entangled in the city's criminal syndicate is told in Satya by Anurag Kashyap and written by Saurabh Shukla. Kashyap would refine his style a decade later, but this film laid the groundwork for it with its groundbreaking realism, unemotional depiction of criminals, and terrifying brutality. The iconic cult hero Bhiku Mhatre, played by Manoj Bajpayee, became the archetype of the complex and erratic gangster seen in independent and over-the-top films today. A pioneer of the "Mumbai Noir" subgenre, Satya introduced hauntingly complex anti-heroes with moral ambiguity to Indian audiences.

Shiva

While Satya depicted a realistic crime drama, Shiva told the backstory of the enraged youth who confronted systemic corruption. Urban violence, the political-criminal nexus, and the rise of the reluctant gangster were exposed to a generation through the film, which was based on a college campus taken over by gang politics. With fluid camerawork, primal action, and a terrifying Ilaiyaraaja music that highlighted the mounting tension, Ram Gopal Varma introduced a new cinematic grammar to Bollywood with his Hindi version of his own Telugu debut.  Shiva, with its famous cycle-chain sequence and gloomy protagonist (Nagarjuna), set the standard for stylised anger and defiance in Indian cinema. As a cult classic, Shiva introduced stylised but realistic gangsterism in Indian cinema, which is driven by social deterioration.

Company

Company focused on the D-Company, which was loosely based on Dawood Ibrahim and his syndicate, while Gangs of Wasseypur dealt with coal mafia families. The film takes a close look at a multinational crime organisation, revealing its inner workings, goals, and conflicts. Company is one of the most accomplished Indian gangster films ever filmed thanks to Ajay Devgn's chilly portrayal as Malik (read: Dawood), Vivek Oberoi's spectacular debut as his protégé Chandu, and Varma's matter-of-fact storytelling. Company was a global gangster film that echoed Satya in spirit while combining grim reality with geopolitical conflict.

D-Day

D-Day delves into the realm of espionage, but it remains deeply rooted in mobster legend at its heart. An obvious reference to Dawood Ibrahim is Rishi Kapoor's portrayal of Goldman. To rescue him from Pakistan, the film depicts an undercover Indian operation. The emotional storylines, particularly those of Irrfan and Huma Qureshi, mirror the personal cost shown in Gangs of Wasseypur, yet it incorporates thriller elements. Instead of praising gangsterism, the film depicts the devastation it causes. Among political action-thrillers, D-Day stands out for its unusual use of the gangster genre to explore themes of betrayal, loyalty, and moral grey areas.

Khalnayak

Years before Gangs of Wasseypur introduced us to Faizal Khan as the multi-layered antihero, Khalnayak introduced us to Ballu, a menacing criminal who questioned Bollywood's simplistic morality. Playing the role of bandit Ballu—who gets out of jail and becomes the subject of a nationwide manhunt—Sanjay Dutt was unnerving and somehow sympathetic. While Satya and Shiva were grounded in harsh realism, Khalnayak painted a more nuanced picture of crime, childhood trauma, and society's failure through the medium of mainstream Bollywood, featuring songs like Choli Ke Peeche. It was Ballu's decision to become a villain that defined him. An important facet that Gangs of Wasseypur would develop with even darker tones was the film's blurring of hero and villain lines, which it laid the groundwork for in Indian cinema.

They are a filmy family tree that begins in the coal-soaked alleys of Wasseypur and continues into the neon-lit crime world of Mumbai. Their joint work has documented the unfiltered, savage, and raw side of India. Even though it has been 13 years since Gangs of Wasseypur came out, the film still stands tall on the shoulders of these groundbreaking works of Hindi cinema history.