Throwback To When Kangana Ranaut Gave Her First Interview! News24 –

Like Mahesh Bhatt’s early films, Gangster, written by Bhatt and directed by Anurag Basu, takes us to the darkest recesses of the human heart where the devil and the saint are slyly affiliated. It is a film that isn’t afraid to let its feelings show. And that’s what makes it notches above the run-of-the-mill bang-bang-kiss-kiss fare.

It is not just heart, it also Seoul. The crowded lanes and the festive festering decadent setting add considerably to the intensity level of this high-pitched drama of love passion, jealousy, sacrifice, and atonement. Gangster is not really a film about homicidal crime. Nor is it a film that dwells stylishly on the glossy exteriors of the high life. It focuses on the stark interiors of hearts that ruthlessly seek love in relentlessly self-serving places. In what is possibly the toughest role written for a female newcomer, Kangana stumbles across a minefield of volatile emotions. Never shy of exposing the innermost contours of a lacerated heart and soul, writer Mahesh Bhatt gives us a love triangle between a girl on the brink, Simran (Kangana), her gangster-lover Shiney Ahuja and the man (Emraan Hashmi) who comes into her life to put balm on her frayed nerves.

Director Anurag Basu captures the desperate anxieties of the three-way passion-play with high-voltage sequences, each done in lush untried colours of life’s most complicated trajectory. There is a curvaceous feeling to every swing and swerve of this dramatically done plot. The narrative offers surprises all through, with heart-stopping moments of suspense to punctuate the terse pauses between one dramatic high and another. It is hard to guess which way the feverish plot would finally go.

Many moments capturing the girl’s anguished dilemma remain clearly etched as illustrations of director Basu’s ability to hold the dramatic pitch at a high decibel without toppling over the weight of overstatement. Especially memorable is the gangster Daya’s arrest at the Seoul station. As he shrieks and protests against the injustice of a justice system that turns his love into a mocking betrayal – the narrative tells us how difficult it is to take a moral stand on the question of right and wrong in the matter of love and morality.

Stylishly shot by cinematographer Bobby Singh, Gangster is a gripping tale where all three principal actors turn in competent performances. Emraan’s strait-laced supportive-suitor’s act is well balanced against Shiney’s smouldering crime-lord turned repentant lover’s act. But the surprise package is debutante Kangana. From burnt-out alcoholic to a woman in love and finally a woman willing to pay the ultimate price for her heart’s peace… the girl goes through the complex gamut of emotions with a perceptible lack of self-consciousness.

In her first interview after the release of her career-making role, Kangana told Subhash K Jha. Kangana got rave reviews for her performance as the gangster’s angst-ridden moll in Anurag Basu’s Gangster. It was a role even seasoned troupers would quake to take. Kangana tackled it head-on. “I don’t know where it came from. But I must tell you, the director Anurag Basu held my hand and led me through the amazingly complex life of my character Simran. I could’ve never done it on my own. Anurag cried every tear that I’ve shed in the film. He raged when Simran raged. He screamed in protest against life’s injustices every time my character was pushed around. I couldn’t have hoped for a better learning experience than this.”

And to think Kangana was initially rejected by Mahesh Bhatt! “That’s right. I had auditioned for Zeher. But I never heard from them. Then I bumped into Anurag at the Marriott and he offered me Gangster. When I was told we’d be shooting Gangster in Korea I didn’t know what I was getting into. I had no idea of the weather. So I packed my chiffons and georgettes. Only to realise that it was freezing cold there. I was so cold all the time that I couldn’t focus on my emoting at all. God knows how it came out right. I want to do the usual stuff. I’m a Kathak dancer. I want to sing and dance. I want to show there’s more to me than just the troubled characters I’ve played in my Gangster and Woh Lamhe.”