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Company (2002)

Company (2002)

GENRESAction,Crime,Drama,Thriller
LANGHindi
ACTOR
Ajay DevgnMohanlalManisha KoiralaSeema Biswas
DIRECTOR
Ram Gopal Varma

SYNOPSICS

Company (2002) is a Hindi movie. Ram Gopal Varma has directed this movie. Ajay Devgn,Mohanlal,Manisha Koirala,Seema Biswas are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2002. Company (2002) is considered one of the best Action,Crime,Drama,Thriller movie in India and around the world.

Mallik is a henchman of Aslam Bhai, a Mumbai underworld kingpin. He inducts local hothead Chandu into the gang, and the two of them soon form a formidable faction within the gang, eventually displacing Aslam. As the empire grows, however, the two of them start drifting apart.

Company (2002) Reviews

  • Wow!

    moviebuff812002-04-17

    Ram Gopal Varma's latest offering 'Company' is probably one of the best Indian gangster films ever made (after Nayakan and Satya). This film is so well done that the viewers feel like they are watching real-life events. And people living in India will know that some of the events are actually inspired by real-life incidents, although the film does not admit it. Company is the story of two friends - Malik (Ajay Devgan) and Chandu (Vivek Oberoi) - how they build up the 'Company' - Bombay underworld on a global scale and thus establish their supremacy. A small misunderstanding between them turns into a large scale mafia war. The cast in this film is great, a special mention must be made of Vivek Oberoi. The son of Suresh Oberoi (former Bollywood star) is talented and seems to have put in a lot of effort for his first film. I only hope he doesn't get type-casted in the future after such a hard-hitting role on debut. Ajay Devgan fits very well into the role of Malik, a cold blooded don who always means business. Manisha Koirala enacts the role of Malik's girlfriend pretty well and is refreshing. However, the biggest surprise of this film was Antara Mali. She has done a great job as Chandu's wife, and it only goes to show that there is no dearth of talent in the country. The narrative is well paced, and the viewer never gets bored. Some people might find the absence of songs in the film annoying, but their presence would only hamper the pace of the film. The script is well written, and some of the dialogues are really memorable - for example, when Malik says "To forgive a friend's mistake is an even bigger mistake in the 'Company'". The background music by Sandeep Chowta really complements the plot and he certainly deserves some credit. But more than anything, it is Ram Gopal Varma's direction that needs to be appreciated. He has proved once again that with a good story, an excellent cast and a lot of determination, one can make a memorable film and defy some of Bollywood's age old norms. A special mention must also be made of Mohanlal. He is certainly one of the best Indian actors of all time and although his Hindi dialogue-delivery in Company is quite sloppy, he deserves a lot of praise for making a good effort. His portrayal of an honest, determined cop trying to eradicate crime in Bombay (loosely based on Sivanandan, Joint Commissioner of Police, Mumbai) is very well executed. The film gives us an in-depth view into the dark world of Bombay Mafia, where only the fittest survive, and how their operations have spread on a global scale. One thing I found intriguing about this film was the role that mobile phones play, how everything can be controlled efficiently by just making one phone call, and how business deals and murders can be executed with, quite literally, just one push of a button. Bottomline: This film is a must-watch. A landmark in Indian film-making, all thanks to Ram Gopal Varma. An easy 9 out of 10.

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  • Another intelligent and incisive look at the gangster life from Ram Gopal Varma

    simon_booth2002-05-13

    Ram Gopal Varma's SATYA is one of my very favourite Hindi movies, though rather an anomaly in the Hindi movies that I've seen. Much darker in tone than Bollywood usually offers, it's also one of the most intelligent movies about gangsters ever made in my opinion. RGV returns to similar themes with his latest movie, Company, but this time brings a whole new style to his direction that makes the movie stand out even more from the Bollywood crowd. The movie still has a grittiness and realism in its examination of the underworld, but this time it is filtered through post-MTV-post-Wong Kar-Wai sensibilities. I've always found Indian movies to have some of the best cinematography in the world, but never seen one that looks like this. Wide angle lenses, cameras half obscured behind the scenery, bright contrast, quick fire staccato editing... all very modern cinematic tricks, and very well done here. The Company is in fact an organised crime syndicate, which our hero Chandu (Vivek Oberoi) joins at the start of the film. Chandu is the young leader of a small time gang looking to make it big. He earns the respect and trust of company head Malik and quickly rises to be his right hand man. When Malik makes a bid for power, the two of them have to handle the fallout from the quakes it makes through the criminal infrastructure. Chandu is a similar character to Satya (who is one of my favourite movie characters, and not just because he has the best beard in film), but a leaner meaner more ambitious kind of career criminal. Nowhere near as mean or as hardened as the seemingly imperturbable Malik, however. Malik takes his business very seriously. The rise to power of a young gangster is a theme that has been handled on many occasions before, and Company is not vastly different to its predecessors... although it is a good reminder of what hopelessly romanticised popcorn fodder the YOUNG & DANGEROUS series are. With almost no song and dance routines, the run time is kept down to a lean 145 minutes, but this is still plenty of time to build and explore the characters and their situations very thoroughly. Company is quite a subtle movie, the pacing not too hurried and the situations mostly underplayed. This, coupled with the depth of the script and the very stylish camerawork and editing, gives the movie a very sharp feel. Another intelligent movie about gangsters, and an unmistakably cool one too. Sadly, the movie is let down terribly on one front - the soundtrack. Not all the time, but quite often the music is conspicuously inappropriate. Most irritating is the over use of Mussorgski's Night On Bear Mountain at completely the wrong times, but there are other problems too. Ultimately, I don't think I enjoyed COMPANY quite as much as I enjoyed SATYA. Perhaps this is because this time my expectation and anticipation was higher, but mostly I think it's that Chandu isn't as sympathetic a character as Satya was. Oberoi plays the character quite well, with mountains of cool but a certain amount of depth... but he doesn't command the screen in the same way that J.D. Chakravarti did. This is probably because his beard isn't as cool. I did enjoy the movie a lot though... the 2.5 hours pretty much flew by, and the script kept me interested all the way through, never becoming too predictable. There aren't a whole lot of laughs in the movie, or even smiles... this isn't the kind of gangster movie that has you rooting for the heroes as they gun down armies of cops (which, incidentally, the heroes here never do... the violence is mostly contained within the criminal underworld). It's a movie that explores what it really means to be a gangster, and the position of crime and criminals within society. Chandu and Malik are certainly presented as the 'heroes' of the movie, but it never glosses over what they actually have to do to get their power. India is a poor country, and it's a fact that a lot of the movies produced in Mumbai are targetted at an audience with a pretty low literacy rate. Bollywood movies don't tend to be too challenging to watch, or if they do wish to explore a more serious point it is usually done with very little subtlety. I am curious as to how successful Ram Gopal Varma is in India, as the two movies of his that I've seen have been challenging in a very subtle way. He's obviously quite a box office draw as Company is clearly a big budget production. Filming 2.5 hours of that kind of camerawork/editing isn't an overnight task, and extensive sections of the film are shot on location in Hong Kong, Africa and... Switzerland I think. Well, I have no doubt that enough of the Indian population are perfectly well educated and will have no problem appreciating the finer points of the movie - but I imagine that the overseas market must have been in his sights as well. Company is a movie that I'd like to see get pushed in the US, as it's a nice reminder that the TRAFFICs and co of the world are not exclusive Hollywood property. Sadly, American studios have frequently demonstrated that its not in their interest to promote this fact, so I expect it will be left with this semi-decent DVD release and word of mouth to spread itself around. My word of mouth is a strong recommendation that people seek that DVD out.

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  • one of the best underworld movies of Indian cinema

    arun-kadavil2006-05-16

    This has to be one of the best underworld movies ever made in India. After the disappointment of jungle and mast Ram gopal varma has bounced back to deliver one of his best works. It rivals his own earlier work Satya. Though based on the underworld both films are completely different as his own words put it company is above the underworld unlike satya. the direction, camera and background score are superb. the cast consisting of Ajay Devgan, Mohanlal and newcomer vivek oberoi perform exceedingly well. After having seen oberoi's later works this performance is easily his best. while Ajay Devgan lives the role to perfection, the Malayalam super star Mohanlal brings a breathe of fresh air by enacting the coolest and most realistic cop Hindi cinema has ever seen. the screenplay written by jaideep sahni is of highest quality. superb dialogues are well delivered especially by Ajay devgan and mohanlal. on the whole a different movie with artistic and technical perfection.

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  • Interesting....

    Puddlemini2004-10-09

    Ram Gopal Varma pulled off a very beautiful film, full with suspense and action, what every avid film fan secretly desires. Complete with actual facts and thrill it was a fun movie and could probably be compare to Godfather being the marvel that it was. Based ON the Bombay underworld the actors had done justice to the roles given to them. My favorite was Ajay Devgan because of his realistic was of portraying the characters and he was basically the life of the film in my view... I can't help but repeat myself but It was that much of a splendid movie Of you want to go for a fun filled ride watch it..

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  • King Lear with mobile phones

    keith-TMB22004-07-10

    Like any great tragedy, this series of human catastrophes hinges on an objective contradiction, the one Max Weber identified with patrimonial bureaucracy. The origins of impersonal rule lie in the king's use of palace organization to assert his independence from the feudal barons who control the bulk of the people in the countryside. He needs a staff and recruits them as individuals who owe allegiance solely to him. But there is always the problem of distance, since local officials are pulled towards asserting their own independence of him. Beyond that he can't afford to let any of his henchmen get too big in case they go for him. Relatively stable forms of patrimonial bureaucracy depend on working out institutional rules for checking this tendency, such as moving officials around so that they can't develop local attachments or hiving off part of the job as a way of undermining a potential rival. It is this structural contradiction that launches a series of cumulative disasters whose instruments are the personal actors. The best dramatic example of Weber's principle in action is Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible part 1. But Company is a pretty good instance too, as are most of Shakespear's history plays and tragedies. Etymological note: company means people who eat (bread) together, referring to how commensality is intrinsic to the solidarity of a group of soldiers. Note also that 'don' means both a mafioso and an academic, suggesting by analogy that intellectuals are killers which of course they are, since detachment requires them to dehumanize themselves and others. So the crux of the tragedy is that Mallik, having plucked Chandu from nowhere (C says "no-one can make it to the top the right way"), becomes too dependent on him and decides to limit his power by giving some of it to Krishnan. This leads to his killing Chandu's friend who can't stand the resulting friction. Then Chandu thinks the politician he eventually kills, Raote, is "not a proper guy" (a remark that one of the weaker soldiers thinks is funny, since it reveals that C believes there is honour among thieves). This partly leads him to baulk at killing the children of the minister. He calls off the contract unilaterally. "If the company can do without me, I can do without the company." And that is that, as far as Mallik is concerned, indeed as far as the logic of patrimonial bureaucracy is concerned. Towards the end of the movie, someone says, in response to the blame being put on Mallik for what everyone eventually realises was a mistake, "whatever's happening is the fault of the business, not one man". But of course, the business can only operate with one big boss or it fragments into impotence (petty feudalism), as in this case. This is why Shakespeare's cumulative exploration of the personal and impersonal contradictions of one man rule ends with the madness and civil war of King Lear. Morality is always personal and the war of criminal enterprise is impersonal. (One of the theme tunes at key moments is Mars from Holst's the Planets). Chandu embodies the contradiction more than the rest. He is a classic individualist of American westerns and gangster comic strips (Dick Tracy), the loner who doesn't believe in justice unless he does it himself. He legitimates his path because official society is just as corrupt but less honest and in any case the game is stitched up to exclude him. The state can produce a clever and basically decent policeman like Sreenivasan, but he knows that the police can't be effective if they always stay within the law. (S is a great successor to the detective Porphyry who undoes Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Indeed he retires to be head of a police training college and is said to be writing a novel based on his experiences with the underworld, called Company...). Mallik is a political realist ("Friendship lasts as long as it lasts") who understands what he takes to be human universals better than most people who prefer not to recognize them. Saroja, his girlfriend, says "You're really a Satan" and he says "There's a Satan in everyone." Previously, "Sometimes I think there's a monster hidden in you". "There's a monster in every human being. It's just that some people are scared of confronting it." The struggle between individual morality and political realism embodied in Chandu and Mallik leads to the crisis. After its terrible denouement, Chandu hands himself over to the state and tries to make it up with Mallik. "I am about to do what I think is right. if you suffer any losses, don't take it personally." Shades of "Don't take this personal; it's just business" in The Godfather. The hit-man's dilemma is between morality and politics. The law just doesn't measure up, but it is all we have if we are not to be subject to rule by the mob. "The Company stands on one thing. That's fear." It was built with "three weapons -- murder, money and compromise". One recurrent jingle says "Yes, it stinks, but it's business." Throughout the movie face-to-face encounters are mediated by conversations at distance using cell phones. If the railway locomotive was the symbol of 19th century industrial capitalism, the symbol of virtual capitalism in our day is the mobile phone. The Company goes international largely through use of this new technology: "The telephone became the biggest weapon in the underworld." A dazzling scene consists of a rapid montage of city landscapes with a soundtrack of phones ringing. This is indeed Shakespeare with mobile phones. A final point. As in King Lear, we should not forget the women. They play a central role in the unfolding of the tragedy as the contradiction between one man rule and the personal morality of his chief henchman descends into bloody civil war and mutual destruction.

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