This Bollywood gangster movie stars Vivek Oberoi as Chandu, a young man who dreams of finding fame and fortune and escaping the slums of Bombay. By chance he meets and becomes friends with the dashing Malik (Ajay Devgan), who turns out to be the rising star of a criminal syndicate. Chandu joins the gang and the two friends soon become rich and move their operation to Hong Kong. Their life of luxury is soon destroyed by jealousy and anger, and the two become bitter enemies. Chandu flees to Nairobi, but Malik soon locates him, and their feud escalates into a full-scale gang war that forces each of them to question their loyalties and decide how far their mutual hatred will take them. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
liked it.
A sprawling organized crime tale about the rise and fall of two strong-willed gangsters, Ram Gopal Varma's Company has drawn comparisons to modern crime film touchstones like Martin Scorsese's
Goodfellas and Francis Ford Coppola's
The Godfather. If it doesn't quite stand up to those two films, it certainly marks a successful attempt on Varma's part to bring darker, weightier themes to the often lightweight world of big budget, popular Indian cinema. Varma is one of a handful of directors trying to move Bollywood into more serious territory, and Company is his most ambitious effort, a companion piece to his earlier
Satya, which also dwelt in the violent world of urban organized crime. With it's flashy cinematography, rapid-fire editing and exotic locations, it has the look of a standard MTV-influenced Bollywood movie, but Varma deliberately eschews some of the more hackneyed conventions. Musical numbers are kept at a minimum. Even though protagonists Chandu (Vivek Oberoi) and Malik (Ajay Devgan) fall in love, respectively, with Kannu (Antara Mali) and Saroja (Manisha Koirala), there are no soaring love duets to interrupt the plot. Varma also creates, in the character of Chandu's mother Rani (Seema Biswas), an alternative to the long-suffering, homily-quoting stock character one might expect. Brash and assertive, Biswas more than holds the screen alongside her youthful costars. In fact, the acting all around is quite good. Oberoi, making his much-hyped debut, provides an intense, brooding contrast to Devgan's equally intense scheming ruthlessness. Somewhat extreme by Indian standards, Company's violence is tame compared to American action movies, and its underworld milieu is nothing new to Hollywood either, but as an attempt to inject serious and depth into contemporary Bollywood cinema, it succeeds admirably. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide