Ranveer Singh's jacket is a genuine crime against costuming, stitched from a denim-leather hybrid that screams 1980s vanity while actively refusing to breathe under the humid Calcutta sun.

Ali Abbas Zafar shoots his action sequences like a man who has memorized every second of Deewaar but forgot why people actually cared about the people throwing the punches. It is all slow-motion struts through exploding train yards and flying coal dust, which works for about twenty minutes before the gloss turns into a thick, exhausting grease. The screenplay wants to be an epic brotherhood saga spanning two decades of railway cartage and political corruption, but it keeps getting distracted by how good its two leading men look when they are wet and shirtless. If I'm honest, the editing is sometimes so hyperactive that you cannot tell which smuggler is getting thrown off the pier, which makes tracking the territorial turf wars of West Bengal rather difficult.

The dialogue relies heavily on Urdu poetry hurled across police barricades and cargo containers, delivered with a volume that suggests the sound mixer left the gain cranked all the way up for the entire shoot. You get these massive chunks of exposition where characters explain their childhood trauma while standing in front of glaringly obvious studio backdrops, and the contrast between the gritty subject matter and the polished sheen of the digital camera sensor never quite resolves. Hindi movies have been trying to recapture the angry young man archetype for decades without realizing that anger requires a social context beyond just looking sweaty in a warehouse.

Priyanka Chopra enters the narrative as a glamorous cabaret dancer named Nandita who somehow commands the attention of both mafia kingpins and high-ranking police officers without ever breaking a sweat or smudging her winged eyeliner. She carries herself with an effortless swagger that dwarfs the boys whenever they share a frame, though the script reduces her to a pivoting prize between two friends who treat her like a very expensive piece of smuggled contraband. Her chemistry with Ranveer Singh is electric and greasy, bouncing off the walls of poorly lit disco sets and damp backstage dressing rooms where nobody seems to have a real job other than looking intensely territorial.

There is a specific supporting actor playing a corrupt police inspector whose overdubbed voice sounds like it was recorded in a tiled bathroom using an iPhone 4, and every time he opens his mouth to yell threats at the orphan-turned-bandits, the illusion of 1970s period-accurate grit completely shatters. It is a small thing, but it bugged me every single time he appeared on screen because the post-production mixing was just that lazy. The background score by Sohail Sen follows Ranveer and Arjun Kapoor around with thumping bass drums and screeching electric guitars that dictate your emotional response with the subtlety of a brick thrown through a stained-glass window.

When the film shifts into its melodramatic second half where the brotherhood of Bikram and Bala faces an inevitable rupture over their mutual love interest, Gunday starts to feel less like a crime drama and more like a very long, very loud music video. Arjun Kapoor plays Bala with a permanent scowl that suggests he swallowed a lemon before every take, lacking the manic, live-wire physical energy that makes Ranveer's performance watchable even when the material gets utterly ridiculous. They are supposed to be inseparable refugees from the Bangladesh Liberation War who crawled through mud and blood to conquer the black market, but their bond feels manufactured by a committee of producers who looked at Sholay and decided the only thing missing was more hair gel.

The political backdrop of the emergency era and the rise of labor unions in Calcutta are treated as mere window dressing for shirtless fight scenes and melodramatic slow-motion embraces in the rain. Hindi films often struggle when they try to marry commercial spectacle with historical weight, and Zafar’s direction splits the difference by ignoring history altogether in favor of pure aestheticized nostalgia. You watch these characters amass unimaginable wealth and political influence in what feels like three afternoon montages, with zero attention paid to the actual logistics of coal theft or dockland dominance. It is all about the grand gesture, the sweeping crane shot, and the aggressively saturated color grading that makes every single sunset look like a digital painting.

Yet for all its narrative shortcuts and deafening sound design, there is a weird, relentless kinetic charge to the way Ranveer Singh throws himself into the choreography of the underworld. He occupies the screen with an unhinged vanity that keeps you from checking your watch during the duller stretches of political posturing, even if the movie itself doesn't have a single original thought in its head regarding crime, friendship, or loyalty. Bollywood movies have churned out this exact brand of glossy bromance ad nauseam, substituting genuine character development with endless needle-drops and aggressively styled denim jackets.

That denim jacket with the leather sleeves just keeps showing up in every single emotional climax, flapping around in the wind while characters shout about destiny and betrayal across train tracks, and honestly, it deserved a better movie.