Filmmaker-duo Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK’s (also known as ‘Raj & DK’) furiously high-priced stock in India’s streaming space and their ability to deliver [especially since 2019] makes you wonder if they have a secret basement full of writers working, reworking and churning out gags on an assembly line. Such is their strike rate for landing them with success.More than the Bollywood directors or as the A-list showrunners they’ve become today – their work has a strong flavour of sketch-writing. Much of their writing outlines seem pieced together with one-liners and gags, while the colours are filled with deft action sequences, sincere romances and some of the most perceptive, adept acting on Indian screens.Despite becoming two of the most popular names within the industry, a certain madness seems to run through their work. Like in their latest outing, Netflix’s Guns & Gulaabs, when a character dies, they mine the moment for typical Bollywood melodrama. The scene is replete with a man lying dead with cotton stuffed in his nostrils, a bawling mother seated next to him is beating her chest, as the violins screech in the background. The ‘hero’ Tipu (Rajkummar Rao) looks on from a terrace nearby – riddled with guilt for being a powerless spectator of his best friend’s murder. Just then, a couple of characters put their arms around Tipu, consoling him, revealed to be two identical twins of the dead man.The sadness is suddenly replaced by a chuckle. And yet, we haven’t reached the punchline in the scene. After one of them hands him a picture of the three brothers, Tipu puts his finger on the friend while mourning him, only for the twin to move Tipu’s finger to the adjacent figure. From building the emotional stakes of the show and diffusing it with humour, it appears that in the Raj & DK universe, they can have their cake and eat it too.Co-created by the duo and Suman Kumar – who they’ve collaborated with for two seasons of The Family Man (2019) and this year’s Farzi – Guns & Gulaabs is set in the fictitious town of Gulaabgunj. Ruled by the Ganchi family (Satish Kaushik plays the patriarch, Adarsh Gourav is the all-set-to-disappoint successor) – the town thrives on its poppy plantations, to make opium. While a section of it is meant to be supplied to the government as a part of an agreement, a large part of the production is grown for the Ganchi family and smuggled outside the region.The characters are mostly outlines and types, with an excellent cast imbuing authenticity into them. As Ganchi, Kaushik is the foul-mouthed patriarch of a local empire, clinging on to power because he knows his son is no good. Gourav as Jugnu, to quote Logan Roy from Succession, is not a ‘serious person’. He hangs in his father’s shadow, and though isn’t disinterested in his father’s business, he also seems to know he will never measure up. Rajkummar Rao, plays a lovelorn mechanic – Tipu – son of Babu Tiger, one of Ganchi’s most-feared henchmen. He wants to escape his father’s sins by opening his own garage, but little does he know about DNA.TJ Bhanu plays Chandralekha – the English teacher of the local school – who from her muscle memory tells her students to “shut up and sit quietly” at the most inopportune situations. Dulquer Salmaan’s Arjun Verma – who seems like someone who has seen too many Vinod Khanna/Mithun Chakraborty films – borrows his persona of an honest cop in a dishonest town. Gulshan Devaiah, aping Sanjay Dutt’s haircut from Khalnaayak (1993), is sublime as an ‘imported’ assassin, four-cut Atmaram – named after his modus operandi of slashing his victim three times before stabbing them.The stakes of the show are established in the first episode itself. Ganchi needs to deliver a lot of opium to a Calcutta cartel, fronted by a man called Sukanto (Rajatabha Dutta). If he fails to deliver, the cartel will send their army and annihilate every last one of Ganchi’s men. Dutta – who appeared in a similar role in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Kaminey (2009) – relishes his lines, especially in the way he asks his aide if the month has 30 or 31 days, after telling Ganchi that he needs to deliver by the end of the month. “31,” his aide tells him, to which Sukanto smiles and says “Ek extra din mil gaya aapko, lucky!”What follows, is a caper following the beats of Raj & DK’s earlier works like 99, Shor In The City, or even this year’s Farzi – multiple storylines intersect in the most unexpected ways, unlikely heroes emerge when one least expects it. There’s a sense of Guy Ritchie’s early work – Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000) here. Each character is more eccentric than the last, their own common-man whimsies morphing into humour in the most unexpected ways.There are enough of Raj & DK eccentric touches here – like a school boy selling ‘love letters’ to non-English speakers by writing lyrics for English pop songs, or the awkward silences between an assassin and his employer, forcing the latter to scream “Hello?” every few seconds. The ‘90s might seem like ‘easy’ nostalgia – which seems to be a recurring flavour with Netflix India – after the success of last year’s Monica! O My Darling and Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhen the year before.To be honest, the ‘90s setting doesn’t do much for the plot, except for arming it with retro tunes and writers with contrivance — given the dependence on landlines, no instant messaging and no navigation maps, etc. It does, however, have one great scene where Tipu, his friend and three school boys – Gangu (Tanishq Chaudhary), Ikhlaq (Araham Sawant) and Nannu (Krish Rao) – listen to Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do with their eyes closed. It doesn’t necessarily take the plot forward in any way, but it’s when the ‘vibe’ of the decade is its strongest. Some of us might even get transported to an era of music channels and pop music to look forward to.It’s apparent that viewers are catching up with Raj & DK’s recipe for orchestrated confusion, but despite a weak final stretch, Guns & Gulaabs works. Largely because of how it’s brimming with repartee, and thanks to a first-rate ensemble putting their best foot forward. However, if you’re well acquainted with the duo’s work, you will see some of the twists coming. It doesn’t feel any less impressive obviously, but as the epilogue scenes of the show suggest – they’re bracing themselves for a second season.Remember, when the duo would wrap up multiple storylines and provide catharsis to its audience in less than two hours? Now, it seems like everything is about milking a premise till it goes bone-dry. Maybe, like their characters, the duo should take a moment and feel Bryan Adams’ lyrics “Everything I do, I do it for you” – about their commitment towards cinema, their first love. Greatness, after all, won’t simply arrive on the back of ‘quirk’.
