Cast: John Abraham, Emraan Hashmi, Rohit Roy, Mahesh Manjrekar, Prateik Babbar, Kajal Aggarwal, Amole Gupte

Director: Sanjay Gupta

Mumbai Saga starring John Abraham and Emraan Hashmi is probably the first major Hindi movie release post lockdown and it has all the ingredients of a mass masala flick to pull the audience into theatres. But the only issue is doesn't have anything new to offer which we haven't seen in a Bollywood mainstream movie in the backdrop of Mumbai underworld.

If you have followed Sanjay Gupta's directorial closely, then there's no surprise element in Mumbai Saga. The film is the old-fashioned cat-and-mouse chase between a police Vijay Savarkar played by Emraan Hashmi and gangster Amartya Rao played by John Abraham. But to get there, the film creates whole chaos in the first half from how Amartya became a gangster to how he becomes a wanted person in the eyes of the cops.

Bhau, played by Mahesh Manjrekar and closely resembles a certain nativist politician is the mentor of Amartya Rao (John Abraham), a vegetable seller who trades tomatoes for guns when the reigning don Gaitonde (Amole Gupte) threatens his younger brother Arjun.

With Bhau’s support, Amartya soon becomes the king of his garden patch. predictability is at par when retribution arrives mere seconds before the interval point in the form of the lean and mean police officer Vijay Savarkar (Emraan Hashmi).

Vijay has sworn to vanquish Amartya, but suffers from not quite knowing what his adversary looks like. When Amartya gives Vijay a taxi ride and Vijay is none the wiser, you know it’s time to bury for good the urban legend that the Mumbai Police is second only to Scotland Yard.

Amid all this chaos, Amartya kills a businessman played by Samir Soni and as revenge, his wife (Anjana Sukhani) offers Rs 10 crore to the police who kills John's character. 

The screenplay by Robin Bhatt and Sanjay Gupta shows Mumbai vibrantly and have been penned rightly for the single screen audience. The dialogues are seeti maar' and can be music to a few people as a Mumbai gangster drama has made it to the screens after a long time.

Talking about performances, John is top-notch as a ruthless gangster but falls low during emotional scenes. The actor often adds extra charm to his tough face by flashing his dimpled smile which talks a lot about his character. Action films are a comfort space for John and the actor makes sure to get the mass appeal right by going OTT with the sequences. However, the well-choreographed stunts are often tailor-made for him and he gets it perfectly most of the time.

Whereas Emraan who is extensively in the second half of the film aces his role as a tough encounter specialist. The actor is known to experiment with his roles and after a very long time played a cop on the big screen. Emraan has been giving dialogues which he delivers with his charismatic expressions and emotive eyes.

Supporting actors played by Mahesh Manjrekar as Bhau is in his element while Amole Gupta is fab as a sarcastic Gaitonde. On the other hand, Gulshan Grover looks stylish as Nari Khan in his 'Bad Man' avatar. John's gang members played by Rohit Bose Roy makes his presence noticed well, while Shaad Randhawa gets a little to show. Meanwhile, Prateik Babbar is usual in his performance.

Special mention to Suniel Shetty who in a special appearance as Sada Anna leaves an impressive mark and is one of the satisfactory guest appearances seen in recent times.

Mumbai Saga is old wine in the new bottle. it has all the ingredients of a Sanjay Gupta film starting from bulked up men to dialogue baazi to the green-toned colour pattern but still, it doesn't have any kind of freshness.