I cannot stop thinking about the way Ranveer Singh spits out the word "apna" right before the climax, his chin tilted up just enough to catch the neon bleed from a streetlamp that probably cost fifty rupees to rent for the shot. Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy has been out long enough for the initial wave of breathless hype to curdle into routine film Twitter discourse, but watching it again on a rattling domestic flight with too much cabin pressure, the grime of the production still sticks to your fingers. It’s a loud movie that often prefers to whisper in the margins, tracking Murad Ahmed from the cramped gullies of Dharavi straight into the air-conditioned green rooms of commercial success without ever pretending the journey is a straight line. If I'm honest, the whole underdog trajectory feels a bit worn down by decades of sports dramas and reality television specials, yet the specifics keep you tethered to the screen long after the plot mechanics become completely transparent.

Akhtar directs with a sort of muscular restraint that prevents the poverty tourism trap so many Hindi films fall into when they venture south of Mahim. The camera doesn't drool over the filth or romanticize the corrugated iron roofs, but it doesn't look away either, capturing the humid, shoulder-to-shoulder friction of a Mumbai chawl where privacy is a myth and every whispered family argument leaks through walls made of pressed cardboard and hope. Jay Oza’s cinematography uses light like a blunt instrument, plunging interiors into deep ochres and bruised blues while reserving the blinding white glare for the rooftop ciphers where Murad first finds his rhythm. The screenplay, co-written by Akhtar and Reema Kagti, avoids the temptation to give every secondary character a neat arc, leaving room for loose threads that never quite tie up, which feels truer to the way life actually operates in those narrow alleys.

Ranveer Singh wears Murad’s posture like a heavy coat he can't quite shrug off, his shoulders permanently hunched to absorb the daily humiliation of a college degree that leads nowhere and a father who takes a second wife to spite the first. It’s a remarkably quiet performance from an actor who usually prefers to chew the scenery down to the studs, relying instead on sideways glances and the subtle tightening of his jaw when someone mentions his family's position as domestic help. He pulls back so hard in the early reels that you wonder if he’s even awake at the wheel, but that exhaustion makes the eventual lyrical explosion all the more jarring when he finally steps up to the mic. By the time he delivers his first proper verse, you buy the transformation because the actor has already made you feel the blisters on the character's feet.

Alia Bhatt as Safeena is another story entirely, roaring through the narrative with a kitchen knife and a broken heart, completely chewing up the screen every single time she appears. She plays a medical student with a violent streak and an absolute refusal to be quiet about what she wants, grounding the romance in something abrasive and slightly terrifying. It’s a performance that recalls Madhuri Dixit in Anjaam crossed with modern urban pragmatism, refusing to soften its edges for the sake of audience sympathy. Safeena doesn't need Murad to save her because she is entirely capable of breaking someone's nose herself, and Bhatt plays that autonomy with a fierce, unblinking intensity that threatens to unbalance the movie's central focus.

Then there's the music, which functions less as a standard soundtrack and more as the actual oxygen of the enterprise, driving the narrative forward even when the dramatic scenes stall out. The rap tracks, developed by Divine and Naezy alongside an army of producers, don't feel like polished commercial pop dropped in from a Los Angeles studio; they have a rough, unmixed quality that matches the DIY ethos of the underground scene they are documenting. Sure, the background score leans a little too heavily on ticking percussion whenever Murad approaches a recording booth, but that's a small mechanical gripe that doesn't ruin the sheer kinetic rush of the musical sequences. It’s a soundtrack that actually understands how rhythm acts as an escape hatch when your physical reality is entirely boxed in by concrete and caste expectations.

Kalki Koechlin brings a jagged vulnerability to Shairee, the wealthy producer who bridges the gap between the slums and the upper-class festival circuits, though her character occasionally functions more as a plot device than a breathing human being. She’s there to look troubled by privilege and to offer Murad a glass of expensive wine he doesn't know how to hold, representing a world of artistic patronage that feels slightly out of touch with the dirt-under-the-fingernails authenticity of the rest of the film. Yet Koechlin makes her interesting by playing her with a low-key exhaustion, suggesting that even the people pulling the strings are bored by their own power. Vijay Raaz, as Murad’s father, anchors the emotional stakes of the first half with a weary cruelty that avoids cartoon villainy, playing a man whose own broken ambitions have curdled into domestic tyranny.

It is worth noting that the film's treatment of class mobility occasionally stumbles into the exact fairy-tale logic it tries so hard to critique, wrapping up complex socio-economic structural violence in a catchy three-minute hook that solves all financial woes. You watch Murad go from writing lyrics on scraps of paper in the back of a chauffeured car to headlining a major festival, and the speed of that ascent feels suspiciously cinematic, smoothing over the brutal realities of the music industry in India. Hindi cinema has always had a soft spot for the overnight success story, and while Akhtar tries to inject grit into the formula, the machinery of the mainstream narrative eventually demands its triumphant freeze-frame ending. That compromise keeps the movie from reaching the raw, bleeding territory of something like Anurag Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur, opting instead for a glossy, inspiring sheen that plays well on a Friday night.

What lingers, though, isn't the rise to fame or the romance or even the politics, but the peripheral moments where nobody is rapping and nobody is shouting about freedom. It’s the sound of the local train rattling past a tenement window while someone fries onions in cheap oil two feet away from the bed. It’s the way Singh looks at his mother when she quietly hands him a small glass of water after another screaming match with his father. Those quiet beats suggest an observational director who understands that the real story isn't the one happening on the main stage under the blinding lights, but the one whispered in the dark while the rest of the city sleeps.

There's a recurring edit in the second half where the film cuts away from a performance just a fraction of a second too early, losing the resonance of the final note to chase the reaction of an audience member in the balcony. It’s a minor editorial tic, probably designed to keep the momentum from sagging, but it constantly robs the music of its final impact. You wanted to sit in the noise a little longer instead of watching Vijay Varma nod approvingly from the wings in his neatly pressed shirt.

Still, the energy carried off the screen is hard to dismiss even when the plotting gets lazy or the social commentary starts reading like a pamphlet handed out at a college festival. Singh and Bhatt make a volatile, fascinating pair, dragging the screenplay across its weaker patches through sheer force of will and volume. You walk out of the theater humming beats you didn't even realize you were absorbing, the rhythm of the city still vibrating somewhere behind your ribs, which is probably all any director can realistically ask for when the house lights finally come up.