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29 March 2024

Bollywood Review: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vicky Kaushal are wicked in ‘Raman Raghav 2.0’

Published
By Sneha May Francis

It’s tough to get around a movie like ‘Raman Raghav 2.0’.

Nothing is what it seems like. Every move, every line, and every look must be scrutinized, and analysed indepthly before we accept the dark world that director Anurag Kashyap wickedly uncovers.

It might appear a tad too contrived, but if you allow yourself to be sucked into the maze that Kashyap painstakingly builds, it will start to unfold a reality like no other.

‘Raman Raghav 2.0’ is a movie that gleefully feasts on the devil within.

It’s much like Anurag’s ‘Ugly’ (2014), only this encounter is far more layered, and disturbing. And, the performances highly sinful.

Clearly, this isn’t a journey for the faint-hearted, with many sequences loaded with blood and gore.

But, there’s a method to Anurag's madness.

There’s a (strange) sinister charm to how he and writer Vasan Bala menacingly exposes the lives of two men, one a trippy cop and the other a boastful killer, as they collide and explode on each other.

Shot over eight chapters, each illustrates their brutal journey, and how it’s shaped them into the men they grow into.

There’s a moment in the two-hour-and-17-minutes of screen time, when Raman slowly sips his tea and gloats about his kill to an unsuspecting old man, who’s just finished reading its newspaper report. As the old man quickly stiffens up at his audacity, we watch in fear.

The music, like in every thriller is key, and Ram Sampath delivers the right notes. And, there's Jay Oza, who lights up the night and preys on the men, as they go for the kill.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui shocks and thrills, and masterfully transforms into Raman, the man who’s desperate to find his “soulmate”. Armed with an iron rod and a face sliced mid-way by a deep scar, he’s a monster on the move. Whether it’s celebrating his crime, even though the pattern is borrowed from a notorious serial killer, or nursing a baby he had just orphaned, it’s tough to understand him.

Nawaz finds his match in one-movie old Vicky Kaushal, who is outstanding as the man in the uniform, who juggles women and substance, even when slyly hiding a fractured past behind his designer sunglasses. It’s when his commanding father strips him of his glasses, you sense his inner conflicts.

The women - Shobhita Dhulipala and Amruta Subhash - aren’t just pretty faces, and expose the fear, and insults that’ve been bombarded on them. Yet, they appear resilient and fearless, despite being constantly cornered.

Although the narrative slips, and a snappier edit could’ve amplified the impact, ‘Raman Raghav 2.0’ is a movie that devilishly lends a whole new dimension to “soulmates”.