With just two days left for the release of accomplished filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma’s upcoming gangster film ‘D Company’, the filmmaker is pulling out all the stops for promoting his directorial venture. A few days back, the director had unveiled the first four minutes of the film, which had upped the curiosity quotient. Thereafter, he released the film’s Telugu song, sung by the filmmaker himself.
Maverick filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is credited with making the genre-redefining gangster crime film ‘Satya’, followed by its spiritual successor and the equally compelling film ‘Company’.
While ‘Satya’ follows a jobless immigrant (J. D. Chakravarthy), who befriends a gangster (Manoj Bajpayee) while in prison, and subsequently becomes an integral part of his underworld gang. On the other hand, ‘Company’ revolved around the rise and fall of an explosive relationship between an astute gangster (Ajay Devgn) and his daredevil protégé (Vivek Oberoi).
Both these films were famously cited by acclaimed filmmaker Danny Boyle as an inspiration behind his Oscar-winning crime film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ for their “slick, often mesmerizing portrayals of the Mumbai underworld, their display of brutality and urban violence, and their gritty realism”.
However, long before ‘Satya’ and ‘Company’ were made, illustrious filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra (Director – ‘1942: A Love Story’) had co-written and directed the cult crime film ‘Parinda’.
The film was essentially the story of two brothers Kishan and Karan (played by Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor) who find themselves on conflicting sides of morality. When Karan’s friend is killed by an underworld don (Nana Patekar), he vows to avenge his death, albeit with unforeseen consequences.
‘Parinda’ was a critically acclaimed and technically brilliant film, which is rightly regarded as a landmark film in Indian cinema, irrespective of the genre. The film reinvented the way the Mumbai underworld was portrayed in Indian cinema. Moreover, it is credited by some critics for introducing realism in mainstream Hindi films.
‘Parinda’ eventually won multiple Filmfare awards including Best Actor (Jackie Shroff), Best Director (Vidhu Vinod Chopra) and Best Supporting Actor (Nana Patekar) besides winning two National Film Awards.
The reputed Indian website Firstpost had called the film “in true sense a precursor to the mafia films Ram Gopal Varma experimented with” Besides, many eminent Bollywood filmmakers including Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Bannerjee and Nikkhil Advani had quoted ‘Parinda’ as the film that inspired them in a big way.
In an attempt to replicate the success of his cult film ‘Parinda’, Vidhu Vinod Chopra adapted his own film to make a Hollywood flick called ‘Broken Horses’ in the year 2015. However, the film was not able to garner the critical and commercial acclaim that ‘Parinda’ had attained.
These three films ‘Parinda’, ‘Satya’ and ‘Company’ are truly path-breaking noir films in Indian cinema, whose legacy is yet to be surpassed by even the celebrated filmmakers who created these magnificent gems.
Now, it remains to be seen whether Ram Gopal Varma’s forthcoming film ‘D Company’ will be able to make a similar impact like that of his cult films ‘Satya’ and ‘Company’. Considering the visionary filmmaker’s stellar cinematic aptitude, we are keeping our hopes high, and fingers crossed.
‘D Company’ is scheduled to stream on the Spark OTT platform from May 15, 2021, onwards.
We’re hiring!
We are hiring two full-time junior to mid-level writers with the option to work remotely. You need to work a 5-hour shift and be available to write. Interested candidates should email their sample articles to [email protected]. Applications without a sample article will not be considered.
