Company Reviews

A sprawling organized crime tale about the rise and fall of two strong-willed gangsters, Ram Gopal Varma's Company has drawn comparisons to modern crime film touchstones like Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. If it doesn't quite stand up to those two films, it certainly marks a successful attempt on Varma's part to bring darker, weightier themes to the often lightweight world of big budget, popular Indian cinema. Varma is one of a handful of directors trying to move Bollywood into more serious territory, and Company is his most ambitious effort, a companion piece to his earlier Satya, which also dwelt in the violent world of urban organized crime. With it's flashy cinematography, rapid-fire editing and exotic locations, it has the look of a standard MTV-influenced Bollywood movie, but Varma deliberately eschews some of the more hackneyed conventions. Musical numbers are kept at a minimum. Even though protagonists Chandu (Vivek Oberoi) and Malik (Ajay Devgan) fall in love, respectively, with Kannu (Antara Mali) and Saroja (Manisha Koirala), there are no soaring love duets to interrupt the plot. Varma also creates, in the character of Chandu's mother Rani (Seema Biswas), an alternative to the long-suffering, homily-quoting stock character one might expect. Brash and assertive, Biswas more than holds the screen alongside her youthful costars. In fact, the acting all around is quite good. Oberoi, making his much-hyped debut, provides an intense, brooding contrast to Devgan's equally intense scheming ruthlessness. Somewhat extreme by Indian standards, Company's violence is tame compared to American action movies, and its underworld milieu is nothing new to Hollywood either, but as an attempt to inject serious and depth into contemporary Bollywood cinema, it succeeds admirably.