Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) Review: Coal, Blood, and Hindi Cinema’s Great Crime Epic

Is Gangs of Wasseypur worth watching?

Yes — Celluloid rates Part 1 a Pick on critic (94), Metascore (89), and Letterboxd (4.2/5) strength, with audience/IMDb signals authenticity-weighted. It is the Hindi crime film that still sets the bar when “best Indian gangster movies” queries surface.

Anurag Kashyap’s 160-minute opener (the saga continues in Part 2) maps decades of Dhanbad feud onto Manoj Bajpayee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, and a chorus of players who treat violence as inheritance.

Myth in the mines

What separates Wasseypur from slicker underworld products is texture: folk song as chronicle, comedy as cruelty’s twin, and a sense that power in the coal belt is older than any hero’s arc. Kashyap shoots vendetta as social history — messy, funny, appalling — rather than cool genre pastiche.

Ensemble as engine

Bajpayee’s coiled authority and Siddiqui’s feral climb are the twin poles, but the film’s greatness is choral. Richa Chadha, Tigmanshu Dhulia, and the soundtrack’s needle-drops make the town feel populated rather than cast. Celluloid’s high Metascore alignment is rare for Hindi crime and worth trusting.

Verdict

Start here, then continue to Part 2. Few Hindi films of the 2010s match its appetite or its dirt under the nails.