Ugly

Even the most expensive special effects cannot match 1% of what viewers can create simply with their imagination. Very few directors have the skill to use this ability of the audience. Unseen is always a lot more scary and disturbing than seen.

There is a 5 minute scene in first half of Ugly. It has no dialogues. There is hardly any action. But it will chill your bones and you will remember it for a long time. It is worth watching Ugly, just to experience the skill of the director in this one scene.

Anurag is truly the gangsta of Hindi cinema. He drags his audience to ultra real, scary and uncomfortable places to meet and confront demons who look just like people you see every day.

Ugly's world is a dog-eat-dog world. Everyone is in it for themselves. They will sell their best friend and his kids to the highest bidder in the blink of an eye.

If you enjoyed Black Friday, Dev D, Gulaal and Gangs of W, you will enjoy Ugly. If you did not, then it is best to stick to Mega Entertainer Sal Khan's movies.

Ugly is one of the finest works from Anurag Kashyap. It continues to depict what he started with Last Train to Mahakali...and later with Paanch... - his love (and hate) for the dark side of human mind.

Ugly at its heart is a racy thriller, intriguing, loaded with dark humor and real, gray characters, as unpredictable as only humans can be. Technically its brilliant. And its as close as you can get to original in Bollywood world.

It keeps you glued to the screen for 130 min and leaves you numb when the show is over.

P.S. Definitely not for the lovers of Dhoom-3, Kick and P-K genre, who like their cinema light, escapist and with popcorn.

This movie left you with the feeling of numb .Ugly sets a new dimension to the Indian Cinema . I am not a frequent watcher of Bollywood movies.But ugly movie is just beyond the ugliness of everything. A grungy, dark police procedural set in motion by a little girl's kidnapping, Ugly has few discernible auteur touches to set it apart from standard genre fare. Gone are the farcical, hyperbolic violence and the larger-than-life, tongue-in-cheek gangsters who modeled themselves on the movies. Gone is the wacky humor. Here the pettiness, egotism and corruption of modern Mumbai rule and the characters are all cheap and small—even the kidnapping victim is annoying. There may be a method here but if so, the result is very dark and downbeat for general audiences. The film's Cannes outing and Kashyap's cult standing could give it a little shelf life at festivals before it heads into genre venues. The cast of characters is presented haphazardly. Shalini (Tejaswini Kolhapure) is a desperate, middle-class housewife kept at home as a semi-prisoner by her macho police-chief husband Bose (Ronit Roy). She's about to blow her brains out with his gun when a knock on the door stops her. It's her daughter Kali (Anishika Shrivastava), whining for her to call her estranged father. This is Rahul (Rahul Bhatt), a down-and-out actor still waiting for his big break, who comes to take her for a drive. He's so distracted with phone calls he barely looks at her, and then he ominously leaves her alone in the car while he goes to talk business with his friend and casting director Chaitanya (Vineet Kumar Singh). Within minutes the girl is missing. Rahul becomes the hero by default as he searches for the girl, first through the police, then following the kidnappers' ransom messages. What little sympathy he inspires in the audience comes from his terrifying interview with local police captain Jadhav (played with gusto by the fine comic actor Girish Kulkarni). Instead of launching a manhunt for the girl, the captain absurdly chats about CELL PHONES and computers while the distraught Rahul chafes and Chaitanya attempts to cajole him into action. All at once, Jadhav realizes the missing girl is the stepdaughter of police honcho Bose, and his attitude switches to FBI pro. At this point the stone-faced Bose, who hates his wife's ex, orders him to accuse Rahul of the kidnapping and be beaten senseless. The rest of the film is a battle of wits between Bose and Rahul to find the girl while tripping up the other. Rahul and Chaitanya are monotonously arrested and rearrested. Police violence is graphic and frightening. They use the "latest" gadgets in their investigation— computers, CELL PHONES and GPS—like they were major novelties on CSI: Miami, which makes it seem the film is aimed mainly at local audiences. There is, however, a continuous sense of vitality and movement in the film, whose action scenes are foot chases filmed from a distance. Kashyap's nasty point is that, between violence, greed and corruption, just about no one is innocent in the end. Certainly all the characters are selfish beyond belief. This existential cynicism hits home in the horrific crime revealed in the last shot, but by that time, the emotions feel light-years away.

It is one of the best to have come out of the Kashyap factory in terms of script and characters. It is one taut, dark, intense and disturbing tale of wretched nature of the human motives and how the grand plan has it's own way of laughing at those.

Interestingly Ugly through each of it's elements will take you back to Kashyap's previous works and remind you why he is truly the king. The brilliant script writing will remind you of Black Friday, Kashyap's first masterpiece. The excellent visual treatment, even though it's not a feature throughout the film is something without which any of AK's films is incomplete. The trippy background score by Brian Oncomber is the stand out feature in the second half of the film when the film begins to approach the tipping point.

Without doubt, the hero of the film is it's characters. Rarely would you come across a film full of complex characters, where the motives of every action of those characters get automatically clear as the story progresses. You do not know what to appreciate more, the courage with which the director is bluntly showing the depraved complexion of human nature or the ease with which that has been knit in a story.The non linear nature of the storytelling in the first half brings the necessary variation which adds to the build up.

Rahul Bhat who is seen on screen after a long gap tells you why there is no dearth of excellent character actors in the country, it's just that there are not enough roles for them. Vineet Singh, aka Danish Khan from GOW, will make you cringe and laugh with the expletive chain reaction. Ronit Roy, in his second powerhouse appearance in a Kashyap production, is perfectly cast. And one performance which is straight out of life is of Girish Kulkarni, as the police inspector. There is as much sincerity in his laugh as is in his sombre face. The one liners are so on mark that you would forget that there is a reel rolling.

Surely, the film has some of it's elements similar to that of Fargo, the classic Hollywood dark comedy, but it never plays on your mind, so it wouldn't qualify as lifting. Kashyapwa has done it again. Can't believe what made them to hold the film for so long.

Dear AK, you are the dark shining light of Bollywood. Keep'em coming

Ugly, undoubtedly the best movie of Anurag kashyap till date, he manages to keep the suspense alive and bring across crucial twists. Ronit Roy steals the show with his best performance and all the cast especially, Rahul bhatt and Vineet kumar did great job. This is about how we tend to lose greater things in life because we are too stuck on our own perceptions. Directed in a very realistic way, I didn't find any flaws in this movie, everything is perfectly crafted in Kashyap style with no violence or gang-fights. I would recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of dark thrillers, I am sure you wont get disappointed with Ugly though the movie is not at all ugly, in fact its a beautiful film with good message to society. I give it 10/10.