Mirzapur the Movie

If there was one show that was asking for a big screen treatment, it was Mirzapur. The desi hinterland iteration of The Godfather, with politics, violence, foul language, turf wars and dialogues that spread like wildfire on social media, drew an instant following. Season three was the weakest of the lot, so the makers knew what needed to be done to lure fans back. Cue: bring back Munna (Divyenndu). Set in 2018, in what would still be the first season, a chunk of Mirzapur: The Movie is devoted to establishing the characters and indulging in some world building for those unfamiliar with dirty politicking in Purvanchal Uttar Pradesh. But the movie invariably is a reminder as to how Munna is the lynchpin, with much of the limited winning, funny moments all belonging to Divyenndu.

Few commodities have proved as bankable on celluloid as crime, and the enduring appetite for bloodshed, betrayal and underworld intrigue shows little sign of abating. It is perhaps no great surprise, then, that after three seasons of mayhem and moral disintegration on Prime Video, Mirzapur should make the leap from the streaming screen to the big screen. Mirzapur: The Movie reaches back to the world established in the first season in 2018, when Akhandanand Tripathi, better known as Kaleen Bhaiya (Pankaj Tripathi), presides over Mirzapur like its self-appointed monarch, controlling an intricate empire built on the twin pillars of drugs and firearms. Yet his seemingly impregnable dominion is already beginning to show fissures, as challenges emerge from within his family as well as from increasingly formidable adversaries beyond it.

Mirzapur: The Movie has the peculiar challenge of starting in the middle of a story, a set of relationships and a world that its audience already knows intimately. There are no introductions, no explanations, no time wasted telling us who these people are, what they want and what they mean to each other. They arrive on the big screen with histories, grudges, loyalties and complicated equations that audiences have watched unfold over three seasons of Mirzapur. During the movie’s 197-minute running time, writer Puneet Krishna’s screenplay begins to introduce a new plot and new players, and what initially seems like an elaborate exercise in fan service gradually finds a life of its own.

A lot of what I like about the Mirzapur franchise can be boiled down to its title theme by John Stewart Eduri. The sound of blacksmiths at work, a minimal bass and synth line, with some light orchestration. Nothing else exemplifies the workman-like focus and the leanness of the early seasons like Eduri’s score. After three seasons of diminishing returns, the show has been rebooted into a feature film, in a parallel timeline when the events of season one concluded. Kaleen Bhaiya (a role that propelled Pankaj Tripathi to stardom in the streaming space) strategically protects his Mirzapur throne, a primary bastion to power in Purvanchal. His son Munna (Divyenndu) is too volatile to automatically be entrusted with it.

There is an old saying in the film trade that in Indian cinema, audiences can forgive a weaker plot if they fall in love with the people inhabiting it. Much like Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay and Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar, the plot of Gurmeet Singh’s Mirzapur is ultimately just scaffolding; the characters are the architecture, and the dialogues lend it vibrant color. You don’t merely watch the characters, you develop a deeply personal, at times toxic, yet fiercely loyal bond with them. The plot occasionally wanders into generic gang-war territory, but we stay glued because of Akhanadand Tripathi, aka Kaleen Bhaiya’s (Pankaj Tripathi) cold pauses and crisp one-liners, Munna’s tragic yet explosive desperation for love, winsome Guddu’s (Ali Fazal) terrifying, unpredictable rage, and Bablu’s (Jitendra Kumar is not as effective as Vikrant Massey) dilemma between a book and a gun.

After straying far and wide into the golden fields of mediocrity, the 8-year-old Mirzapur franchise returns to the comforting folds of its past like an ex-lover aching to rekindle a lost romance. Mirzapur: The Movie erases memories of the doomed third season, doing a factory reset of a cinematic universe that had reached its natural demise. It places us bang in the middle of the famous Season 1 — back when all the primary characters were alive and perverse; back when the narrative was yet to become a pale imitation of itself; back when guns, gore, profanity and sex were the law of the land; back when emasculated men were still desperate for validation from toxic fathers and brothers; back when the heartland-porn-coded vibes of the Tripathi mansion was yet to be hijacked by multiple storylines and half-hearted wokeness.

Mirzapur perhaps marks the first instance of a popular web series being turned into a feature film. The series, which ran for three successful seasons over the last eight years, was helmed by Gurmeet Singh, who has also directed the film. Much of the team remains the same, from the cinematographer to the actors, with the notable exception of Vikrant Massey, replaced here by Jitendra Kumar. Kumar is a fine actor and fits the bill perfectly.