Organized crime families can go on for decades. Grudges can last forever. Guys on the bottom can kill their way to the top and guys at the top can have their head in a bag in a river at any moment. It’s a lawless world that coexists, if uncomfortably, with the lawful world, like an animal kingdom, fraught with sudden death and bloody conflicts for alpha status. They’re people who aren’t organized enough to become governments themselves, but organized enough to be difficult for government to take down. Sounds like a good movie to me. And, yes, that’s a movie that’s been made at least seven hundred times, but THIS time it’s a five-hour epic from India. It covers three generations of power grabs and bullet spray in the coal-mining village of Wasseypur. Dangerous lives, bitter wives, dead fathers, avenging sons, rises and falls. It’s every gangster film you’ve ever seen cooked up juicy with curry and naan. It’s the Bollywood Godfather. The characters here break all of the rules that they can, but the film itself breaks none. If you’re up for another run through the mafia movie formula, this is a good time. Director Anurag Kashyap keeps the train rolling fast with quick scenes and a confident style. His camera lives among the lowlifes while his soundtrack loves Indian pop music with hilariously vicious lyrics (always translated in the subtitles).
On home media, the film is all one big epic, but for theatrical screenings, it was divided into two parts released at the same time. The second half is Gangs of Wasseypur Part 2