Guddu Rangeela: A colorful Western. Review on Guddu Rangeela

It’s the usual commentary on all ills ailing our society: Khap, female infanticide, dowry deaths, feudal mindset, police-criminal-politician nexus, rotten judicial system, bad Hindi music, rutted roads, dust, flies, and too much of vegetarian food.

But it’s simple, entertaining, and funny in parts, and seems to get better as the plot edges towards a climax. The writers seem to suddenly exhilarate in newfound creative freedom and courage, and begin to unleash the beasts of wit chained within. The dialogues get bolder and punchier as the characters scramble in a mad rush towards a crowded exit, when all players get together and get to say their last words.

The female leads, both Jattnis, whose names famously escape me, though sheathed from curly locks to twinkly toes in condom-proof yarns of righteousness and salvation made white in the blood of gentle lambs; sack-clothes that clothe them around, so that the shame of their nakedness do not appear; their eyes, anointed with eye-salve that they may behold and undo any blemish that thwart their pristine sparkle; with birthing hips and petite breasts that un-cage the offspring of their soaring passions, that promise nothing and hide everything, scarcely conceal their straining beauty and that youth’s proud livery, so hungrily gazed upon.

In short, they are both hot, though dressed in sack-clothes, and having rustic razor-edge Haryanvi tongue and manner.

Billoo Pehelwan, aka Ronit Roy, carries out the Khap orders of smothering couples that dare to marry inter caste, in their untimely, dusky graves, dropping them into the rotten mouth of death. Alongside, he also muscles votes for the wily politicians, who tolerate him, just.

Guddu and Rangeela, both wronged by him: one by being orphaned, the other by widowing, team up with Black Bengali and White Baby to wreak vengeance upon his dark soul. Disdaining fortune, with brandished steels, which smoke with bloody execution; like valor’s minions they carve out their passage, till they face him; and without so much as a shake of hands or a farewell martini, unseam him from the nave to the chops, and fix his head upon the cowshed.

In the end, the musical track changes track, and the score becomes pithy Western, and the distant horizon chokes up with foreign dust and locust to lend a subtle suggestion that you’ve just watched a Bollywood equivalent of a Western, where the far outnumbered and out-foul-mouthed gunslinger fella and wench slay the tobacco spewing baddie.

Enjoy without guilt; it’s a shameless trip down brain-dead gratification. A pleasant surprise!

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