 Hey, welcome back to our SuperDirect, it's Ethan Corbin. I'm Rick. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Come on, choose the content. It's so choose. Think about it, it's a Patreon, follow us on the Facebook, Twitter, camera, and the bell, and follow the notification squad. Bang! And today, what are we doing? We're doing a movie review. And we're also going to need some therapy after this on your Atkashi up binge that we're doing right now. Man, this man's mind is wonderful and demented. But anyway, so we reviewed at the highly required one. We really, really wanted to. We saw the trailer almost a year ago. I know, and I remember loving the trailer and being like, oh my goodness, I got to see that. Yeah, so we saw that. And then obviously a lot of people said, go see it. It's an amazing performance by Nawaz on your Atkashi up. Vicky Gushal, all of the stuff. So we watched it finally. The only place we could get it was on YouTube. Or you could buy the DVD on Amazon, but we weren't going to wait for that. There was, I think, two issues with music. I don't know if you've found that. Two issues? Yeah, I think it was, I don't think it was on purpose. I think it was the fact that we were watching on YouTube the two times when he was killing people. It's towards the beginning when Nawaz is doing killing. Which by the way, spoilers everybody have already started. Yeah, Nawaz kills people, sorry. Don't watch this if you wanna watch the movie and watch the movie. I don't know if it happened to you, but the music went in and out when he was killing in certain parts? I thought that was intentional. I thought that was on your own decisions. You can tell me if I'm wrong, but it was like going, the music went high, low, high, low, high, low. I don't think that's on purpose. I think they were trying to avoid a copyright is what I think they were trying to avoid. Maybe, I thought it was actually just his choice to make it in and out of it. It could be, you can let us know. Anyways, sorry. Obviously starring Nawaz and Zadiki and Avicky Kurshal and say her name for me, Rick. Who played Simi? Yeah. Yeah, Sobita, Duli Pala. Duli Pala. And then obviously another notable name we should mention was Anushka Sani, who played Ankita. She had a smaller role toward the end. Yeah. But it's obviously a directed and written by Anyard Kashyap. We're binging him right now, guys. Sorry. But do you want to read this in options for me real quick? Yes. Ramana, a maniac murderer, finds a soulmate in Raghavan, a policeman, who inspects his murder cases. He tries to make Raghavan realize how they both are similar. I wish it didn't say that on IMDB. That kind of almost gives... I hate that. That synopsis isn't great on IMDB there. It's, I find that synopsis to be downright wrong. It's almost spoiler. Almost spoiler. Yeah, I don't think that's synopsis at all. Anyways, but obviously this was very requested when this is a spoiler review. So your initial thoughts, Rick, and then we'll get into the more of the details. The tooth got a lot of details because I, as I've been, if you'll see here in my notes, I mean, when I, if I like a movie, I write down a lot of notes. Holy poop! Yeah, and so I'll tell you the two things. Number one, one of the most extraordinary, weirdest and wonderful love stories I've ever seen. You're right. It's weird. And it's a love story. Yeah, it is. And it is for me, I mean, we just watched it. So I'm in the afterglow. It's one of my favorite films I've ever seen. It's like up there in the conversation for me of like my top three Indian films of all time. Really? I love, love, love this movie. Interesting, because I actually told Steph, I said, I think I like Ugly more as a film. And I love this. Really? No, no. I like this way more. No, and this isn't saying that I didn't like this film. I really, I really, really enjoyed this film. I just, I think as a whole as a film, the inner workings and all the different parts moving in Ugly worked. And there wasn't anything that didn't work in this. That's not what I'm saying. But that was interesting that you said that you like this one even more than Ugly. But I can rave about this one with you, so go right ahead. Okay, I find it, okay, let me just, let me get into the larger picture things versus some of the smaller nuanced stuff we'll talk about as far as the technicalities of craft. Let me get into the larger aspects. Oh, we'll get into Nawaz. We're gonna get into, and the directing everything. So I, the larger aspects, for example, which I obviously are gonna include when we can start talking off with this brilliant man, writer-director. He does, we talked about this with Ugly and the fact that he will take characters and he does to them things that Shakespeare did and making them more complex. But what made this for me a notch above Ugly was that it wasn't just these characters had the complexity of real humans. And that there's two things. They reminded me of something Shahid Kapoor said about his playing Kabir Singh, and we resonated with this when he said, he can't judge a character when he's playing the character. And that is something that Anurag does with his characters. Oh, he doesn't judge them at all. He doesn't allow his audience to judge them. Nope. He puts them in a position where you think you know who they are and the moment he puts you in a position to formulate your bias, he starts twisting it on you and then you realize, wow, I have a bias against that person and maybe my bias was wrong. And the other thing he does as a director is what I see why these men work together. He's the director of the way Nawaz is an actor and that they both will not allow you to stereotype them. And the overall message of, the twofold message of number one, the smaller message was for me, people living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And I would love to know if that's why he put broken glass in the final credits. I don't know if that's why he did that yet. I had that thought in the final credits as well as he really shows you in, he did it in gangs, he did it in an ugly and he does it in here. He shows you and makes you question the nature of evil and who is evil and why do you categorize them as evil? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. It was almost philosophical. And a lot of points to where obviously Nawaz, and I understand now why, because when I asked him if you want to play the Joker, he's like, I've already played it and he was talking about this film. And I get it. I now understand because just like, especially the Dark Knight one, there's a famous line, everybody knows it, that Michael Cain says, he says, some men aren't looking for anything logical like money. So I just want to watch the world burn. And that's really what Nawaz's character almost was. He was like, I killed these people on purpose and I've admitted it to you and it wasn't for a vendetta. It wasn't for anything, except for one, he did one for a vendetta. Yeah, but ultimately he just said, I do it because I like to kill. Yeah, he likes to kill. And there was no rhyme or reason behind it. And they're also basing it off of a real serial killer that was around. And so that's kind of how he was as well. So that's kind of, they were kind of inspired by that. But what they were saying is, this guy, he doesn't hide it, but obviously Anuray Kashyap is making a bigger point in terms of law enforcement or people that do it under legally. Oh, anybody. Yeah, anybody who's convinced themselves that that's one of the things I love about both ugly and this, but this does it for me at a much higher metaphysical level in terms of him presenting a mirror to you and not only causing you to reevaluate your entire judgment bias, but reevaluate yourself. And he constantly shows you, you may not think this, but everybody has within them the capacity to do the most heinous evil thing. And if you don't, yourself deceived. And who are you to judge somebody else? Because when you get, in many respects, I found it extraordinary that, and this is due to the writing, the directing and the brilliant genius of the actor Nawazid and Siddiqui, man. This character, tell me if this was your experience. I went from being very, very uncomfortable and afraid of this character to looking at him and going, are you a freaking anti-hero? Are you the protagonist? How did that happen? I kinda, I was, I look at, especially characters with actors that I love a lot. I look at them a lot with love, a lot of time. Like that's why it happens in the same thing when I watched Joker with Joaquin Phoenix. I got so happy when he was just murdering people. And it was happening in this too, but obviously he was ridiculously creepy and my wife hated him, obviously. But she loves the performance, obviously, but she hated him and especially when it was, there was, well, I'll get into Nawaz in a minute. Yeah, I'll get there in a second. I'll get there in a minute. But I wanted to finish off. I wanna think about Anurad in the whole philosophical thing. Yeah. I love that he makes a film that you don't know. Like a lot of people will see a film like this and I don't know who I'm supposed to be rooting for. Like who's the good guy? Right. And I love that. I do too. I love that he makes a film. And it seems like every single film so currently. Like it even happened in Sacred Games was sometimes you thought Sartaj was going bad. Right. And all that kind of stuff. But he makes it so like every single character in here, if you're rooting for them, they have their flaws and they're a great character. And I love that because it's very human in the way he creates his characters. I love that. No, I do too. Yeah. I do too. And a little other small things because we can spend nine hours talking about Nawaz. I thought the film like Ugly, he grabbed me instantly with saying of who the murderer was and this is not his story. Instantly gripped. I also think a big applause to the makeup on Nawaz. Oh, it was phenomenal. I was like. Because that scar was so perfectly done. And he was highlighting it in some of the shots he had of Nawaz with the lighting and the close-up. So you could see it was actually raised a bit from the scar tissue and indented it. It was a small makeup has always been for me more important than big makeup. That's why I was so happy the Revenant one for makeup because it was such detailed, small, close-up, tight facial makeup. And that scar on Nawaz was just perfect makeup. And it was he and he going into Nawaz, he in this, this might be my favorite and his best performance to me. And that's saying a lot because everything I've seen in men has been incredible. But he kind of the only other person I've seen do it like we've talked about is Daniel DeLewis and he made his bones kind of almost fall differently on himself in this one. Yeah, man. This is Nawaz and Siddiqui's performance in this film is for me and I would tell this to anybody who's talking to me about acting. It is at the same level as the legendary performances that people talk about which would be Heath Ledger's Joker and Joaquin Phoenix's Joker, Brando's Godfather, Daniel DeLewis's Bill the Butcher, these iconic Cara Al Pacino's Scarface. This is the first moment he was on screen. I wrote this down. Opening frame. Nawaz is gone. Yeah. And gone like I'm confident if I was on set with Nawaz it in. I suspect and based on what we know from his book and other things, he was pretty much in character most of the time of the filming because he had to be. If you're playing a psychopath, the killer, you have to be and I know that this role took a massive toll on him personally. I don't know that I would have been very comfortable around him. He would have made, I was watching the actors opposite him, especially the women and thought they're not acting. He's giving them enough that they don't have to pretend to be afraid because he's extraordinarily disconcerting. It was so, this performance was so incredible. Incredible. Because the reason he's so incredible is because Nawaz, and he obviously he's played a lot of in India called negative roles, right? But he or evil, right? He never plays as characters evil. He never plays a character, period. Yeah. Yeah. Like a lot of people that aren't as experienced of actors will play, try to play evil. They'll try to be evil like in their mannerisms and they'll try to look. A lot of his characters seem very innocent, which is why they're so menacing and so creepy because he almost has an innocence about him at times. And you're like, he can't, and then he just goes off and tries to hit a dog with a... I'm gonna tell you something that is gonna be controversial to some. In my book, in my Thespianatic Dictionary, I think what he did with this character was a more Herculean attempt at artistry than what Joaquin Phoenix did with Joker, and here's why. This is the sole reason why. One of the most beautiful things about Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is the side of him that for someone who's a psychopathic killer, you actually empathize for the guy and care. And you actually can see, though you don't agree with what he's doing, the rationale behind why he does what he does, because in many respects, it's not nature as much as it was nurture. He's a product of the abuses he's had to receive all of his life. And he may have turned out different, right? I don't think Anurag gives us that liberty with this character in his script. I think this man is criminally insane. Yeah, there can be that argument. But anyway. And because of that, I'm sure you've seen documentaries of the criminally insane, the people who actually in brave, wavelength testing show zero signs of emotional connectivity and empathy, who are definitive socio and psychopathics. Yep. This character is that. Yet. Yet. There's moments in there. I'm feeling a sense of sympathy toward him and it was mind-boggling to me that I could feel a sense of sympathy for a definitively psychopathic, criminally insane, evil character. And that to me is the combination of the script and the brilliance of Nawazid and Sadiqi being able to do what he does in this. He's one of the most extraordinary actors I've ever seen. Yeah, Steph brought up the fact that with the scar, she doesn't know if, well, obviously we don't know where that came from. I don't think we got that explanation, but she says he might have gotten brain damage. And that could have been a reason for him to do what he does. Who knows, that's obviously just a theory. But one of my favorite parts, and he did it a couple of times, whenever he was talking to the police the first time in confessing, right? Oh yeah. Trying to get them to, one, the entire scene was incredible because I was just like, he was effortlessly just talking about what was going on. And I was just in training, I believed 100% what this man was doing. Somebody walked across frame. And he just, he just dared at him. He stopped what he was saying. I don't know if you remember the part in the scene. He, like he was murdered and they walked, somebody just walked over there and he was, I don't remember that. He was like five to 10 seconds. He just, he was so pissed off at the man who walked across and then he just kept going about what he was talking about. Yeah. So little, and I think, I don't think that can be written. That, I think that was an improvised thing. No, the other thing that can't be written, which something that was written I laughed out loud at was the last moment we have with him when he has his cigarette, but he still doesn't have matches. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah. The thing that can't be scripted, which is just the work, the training and the gifting of Nawaz is his inner monologue. I could see his inner monologue not being logical. I don't know how he did it. If we had the opportunity to talk to Nawaz, the first question I'd want to ask Nawaz it in is when did you know you reached the place that your inner monologue was as incongruent as what Anirag scripted for your character? Where, and it's what I think caused him to have so many problems and had a hard time recovering from the role. Cause I saw the inner monologue of his character and his justifications for what he was doing being so psychotic that I don't know how, Nawaz was able to disassociate his own frame of reference and then get back into it later. Any actor who did that clearly would have what he did, a hard time coming back. Cause his inner monologue, everything going on behind his eyes was psychotic. He was psychotic. Yeah, just in the looks alone and then every single time he went into a room, the entire scene when the kid was tied up was just so difficult to watch. And then he just, with no remorse, just killed him. Okay, so how about, how impressed were you with Vicky in this role? I was very impressed with Vicky. Obviously we have not explored him enough. I know that. And we get accused of that. And I'm sorry, it's not on purpose. It's just the way our movie watching is gone. It's not because we don't like him. We've loved him in everything we've seen him in. This was obviously, like we've said before, we know him as Vicky from Uri. That's how we were introduced to him. So that's how I see him. So to see him in this type of role, and I know he does these types of roles all the time, but we haven't seen it. And I really, really enjoyed his performance. I thought it was so interesting to see the way Anurad kind of weaved his character through the entire thing and then to bring it back to the love story that between them. So yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed Vicky's performance. Yeah, to me, a testament to Vicky's performance being so strong is the fact that here he was in a film opposite a man who had created a character that, for me, is one of the greatest characters I've ever seen on film, the Wasidans character in this, that Vicky kept me on the screen wanting to, when I watched Dark Knight, every moment Heath Ledger's off the screen, all I'm doing is waiting for Heath to come back. Watching this, I couldn't wait for Nawaz to come back, but I was thoroughly engaged with what Vicky was doing. Yeah, he definitely held his own with Nawaz in this one. And not to say he couldn't hold his own, obviously. He's a very talented actor. But he definitely held his own with what Nawaz was doing. And he too, though he didn't play somebody psychotic, I'd love to know how difficult this role was for him and the way he treated the women in this. Pretty psychotic. Vicky's character was pretty psychotic. He was, but he was drug-induced psychosis, not definitively sociopathic. That's true. And that would have a whole other realm of challenges. It would be more akin to DiCaprio's challenges in Django that he had being, treating all the black people the way, DiCaprio got physically sick the way he had to treat the black actors on set. And I felt also that, I found one of the most powerful moments in the film was the moment he had with his dad when his dad, he faced off. And they just stood there for like a minute? They just stood there. Like on your, on your arc wasn't giving them any, any help at all. I, I guarantee he just let them go. And that was who's going to back down. Yeah. He's, he was probably like, I'm just going to let you guys go. And if you feel, whenever you feel you need to walk off that I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened. Yeah. Who wins? Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. I wouldn't be, I love that moment as well. I also want to talk about, what's her face? Say her name again. About the ladies? Yeah. Then I was so, Yeah. A hundred percent. Say her name. So be, Sobita Dulepala. Yeah. I thought she did really, really well. Fantastic. Like I, like she's one, she has a great look and like the, so the camera like really loves her. And I, I was, she, what else was she in? She's in Maiden Heaven, Bart of Blood, Son of Abish. Okay. In ghost stories. She's in ghost stories as well. Okay. But yeah, I thought she did really, really well. Every single time she was on screen, she was like sparring with Vicki a lot. A hundred percent. And I loved it. I loved her character as well. The, just the character, the way it was written. She was not backing down. She wasn't scared. Like the whole one where Vicki was trying to kill her. Like she, threatening her. And then she just took the call and then she came back. She was like, wait, where were you? Yep. And so she's like, yeah, you don't have the power here. I have the power. Yep. I thought she did great. I think that I would love to ask him this question as well. It would shock me if On Your Eyeed Cush Up was not involved in casting from day one. I don't think he's the kind of director. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling he's not the kind of director who just lets the casting director go make the choices and kind of choose from the cream of the crop and then send them to him. I feel like his actors on some as an ensemble are always so freaking good that it's either one of two things. He's either so in tune with it in the same way that we understand that we've learned about Satyajit Rai has been so enmeshed with the selection or he just so completely trusts and knows that the casting that's gonna be done by Mikesh Chabra, the casting director who also did gangs, man, the casting in ugly and in this as an ensemble every single person. Yeah, everybody in games, which is a massive cast. Also, I saw an ugly people thought I didn't know how to say sacred games. Like they're like it's English words. How do you not know what sacred games is? We call it sakurigams, you idiot. Anyways, go on. Yeah, so let me just hammer off my bullet points and get off my high horse. I thought it was a good idea to do that. I thought in that scene where Nawaz had his first monologue, I thought the direction was extraordinarily brilliant with the use of actual rain and radio when Nawaz was talking about rain and radio and his monologue. I thought a common theme that I found in gangs and ugly and mis from Khashab is he likes to show the depravity in us all. In every single person. And he does so in an astonishing way without demonizing his characters. I don't, that's so hard to do and make it believable. And his scores as well, he will do the weirdest things with his music. There's like no symmetry to his score. You could listen to the score to this film and every track you go, this is from the same film? Yep, and it's happened in almost everything he's been a part of that we've watched is he has these unique parts where he wouldn't think techno music would be playing here, but he decides to put techno music. And so it's something I would love to ask him about. Like maybe he just wants to surprise people that wouldn't be a shock to me is that, but I'm sure it's a much more intellectual answer than that than just I wanna shock people. He is, he showed it in ugly. He showed it again here and he showed it in gangs. The man knows how to direct and he knows how to control when Vicky gets in the fight with Simi, is that the character's name, Simi? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when he gets in that climactic fight with her and all that we see because he's, there's a lot of really tight uncomfortable shots. We see her fall out of frame and hit the ground and Anurag does not let us see. We know she died and we can make assumptions. And that's a, that Hitchcock was the master of letting you know that what was scarier was not what you saw, but what you can't see. And the control of that frame, as well as in a similar way, he does that psychologically when the brilliance of Nawazidin in that room saying, yeah, it was me who brought her home and my girl was there and I brought her into the back room and then my penis wouldn't get hard and you're realizing It was great. He was watching the whole freaking thing and it's a love story. Yup. It's great. Yeah, that last part where he's just, I would just want to look into your eyes. And I was like, oh, they're so cute together. They were made for each other because when he goes walking in and he's got the tire wrench from his truck, from his trunk, I mean, when Vicky, when Vicky goes in at the end and he's going to kill the girl who got away who saw Nawazidin said she needs to die, what that summarized at the end was they were made for each other. I can almost guarantee this didn't do well in India. Absolutely. Totally guaranteed this didn't do well. I know he's a popular guy, but I can almost guarantee most of his films don't do well, like box office wise. Just because in India, a lot of the films are much more happy and romanticized, at least in Bollywood. Yeah, as you say that, I'm looking this up right now because here's my suspicion. My suspicion is it didn't do well at the box office, but it probably got a standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival. Oh, I can almost guarantee it. Yeah. So yeah, obviously we like this film a lot. It'd be interesting after we see all of his films where the final ranking would... I mean, I feel like gangs will still be... that film was so brilliant. It is, but I'll tell you what. Again, I'm in the afterglow. This for me is so spectacular for me. This is my favorite on your Rikasha film. Really? Yeah. Wow, that's surprising. Obviously, see, gangs is so for me enmeshed in the gangster genre that it is in the greatest of all times. It's in the same conversations as The Godfather and Scarface and Goodfellas. It's an iconic one of the greatest gangster films ever made. This isn't a gangster film. This is the most warped love story I've ever seen in my life. And because it's so daring and so difficult and done so well, I find this to be... I would tell people, you want to watch one of the greatest gangster films ever. You've got to see Gangs of Wasiper. But if you want to see one of the most unique, extraordinary performances by a director and an ensemble cast, and this man, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, in ways that if you thought you liked Joachim Phoenix and Joker Man, I find this movie to be one of my favorite films of man just of all. I think it's an absolutely brilliant, brilliant film. Well, there you have it. We both loved this film. Rick, I think, loved it even more, which is surprising that I'm surprised that... Well, no, for this kind of film. I'm surprised... No, it's not that I didn't love it. I loved it. I think he loved it even more. I know, which is weird for this kind of film. It's usually the other way around. But we love the man, Nawaz. So this film is amazing. Go watch it. Let us know what... There's a bunch. There's Black Friday. There's Dev D. There's Gulal with that song. I think... I can't remember what else. But, yeah, obviously he's got a lot. Let us know what our next Nawaz film needs to be. Because we're going to see him all. Our stupid reactions coming in for the...