Guns & Gulaabs Review: Guns and Gulaabs sets in the fictional town of Gulabganj is a wasted effort. Created by Raj and DK, the seven-episode series despite two superb actors in Dulquer Salmaan and Rajkummar Rao, weaves in and out of inanity. The writing is such a mess that the main plot of drug dealers gets diluted with a school romance, a father-son strife and a cop caught between his lovely wife and a former flame. Really, the series reminded me of old Indian films that believed in “paisa vasool” in a way that it filled its canvas with just about everything that was possible. We had lovers, we had villains and we had comedians who I was told once upon a time were meant to provide relief from the sombre.
In a way, Guns & Gulaabs – now on Netflix — runs more like an Indian movie of the 1960s. Inspired by Misfits of the world, it mixes and mingles violence and crime with love and romance as well as cold brutality with tenderness. But the scripting gives little scope to narrative value or style and wastes talents like – Salmaan (Arjun) a narcotics cop who falls prey to temptation and plans to steal opium worth crores of rupees while two opposing thugs are trying to amass their fortunes by getting hold of the illicit material. Waiting to buy it like a vulture circling its prey is a man from Bengal. Popping out of all this is Tippu (played with wonderful finesse by Rajkummar Rao), a motor mechanic, who is pretty unsure about which side he would like to be in. And towering over all this is Ganchi (Satish Kaushik), who while fixing a deal falls through a wooden floor and slips into a coma. His son, Junior (Adarsh Gourav), takes over and walks around with an arrogant swagger.
Woven into this – rather thrust into it – is a school love story between Arjun’s daughter and her classmate that sticks out like a sore thumb in what I saw as a crime story. Then we have another love tale between the motor mechanic and a school teacher, Chandralekha (T.J. Bhanu), who takes English classes. Such digressions do not auger well for what could have been a gripping tale of treachery and drug dealing. Instead it turns into a wishy-washy whimsical stuff that slips and sags so often that I found it hard to sit through the long episodes.
However, what keeps the series from sheer depths of despair are some fine pieces of performance. Rao is intense in a very pleasant sort of way. His face lights up when he smiles that seem to hide a thousand emotions. His desperate attempts at wooing Chandralekha are disarming and gives us a feel of old world charm. There are moments when his emotional curve appears amazing. Salmaan’s approach to Arjun is multifarious. He is a affectionate husband, a loving father, and a no-nonsense cop, who gets pulled into a web of greed. His range is just fantastic, and keeps the Guns booming and the Gulaabs blooming.
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