‘Zila Ghaziabad’ review: A replica of the 'Dabangg' series

Resham Sengar Anand Kumar’s directorial project ‘Zila Ghaziabad’ opens with a sequence in which a train is being successfully robbed by a gang of robbers led by Mahendra Fauji (Arshad Warsi). And if you have seen the `Dabangg` series, it won’t take you long to realise that the ‘victory’ title song that follows the loot scene, is closely inspired by Salman Khan’s money-raking film. But not just the song, you have ‘Zila Ghaziabad’ painted in the shades of ‘Dabangg’ series in every possible way. So here you have ample gravity-defying action stunts, a hulky and bulky policeman to set things straight, a romance element thrown in, raunchy item numbers for cheap thrills, lots of blood bath and you can keep adding other possible paraphernalia. The only thing that makes this movie a tad dissimilar from ‘Dabangg’ is that it has some thrilling aspect which perhaps its savior. ‘Zila Ghaziabad’ narrates a real-life gang-war tale of the nineties which involved two powerful gangs led by Satbir Gujjar (Vivek Oberoi) and Mahendra Fauji (Arshad Warsi). Fauji is a right-hand henchman of Ghaziabad’s political figure played by Paresh Rawal who is often referred to as ‘Chairman’. On the other hand, there is Satbir, a school teacher by profession with idealistic views, whom the Chairman equally favours because - a) his education background is helpful in cracking deals that Fauji’s guns can’t b) he is Chairman’s would-be son-in-law. Now, when the Chairman refuses to cough up too much money for the marriage of Fauji’s sister, his greedy and crafty brother-in-law takes advantage of the opportunity to incite Fauji against Satbir. Why? Because the Chairman kicks the brother-in-law in the butt for usurping a part of his property, thereby, angering the latter. Fauji joins hands with Chairman’s arch rival Rashid (played by Ravi Kishan) to kill Satbir. Sanjay Dutt enters the scene as a cop with shades of grey, Pritam Singh, to play mind games against the warring gangs. Now let us move on and talk about the actors in the roles they have played. Paresh Rawal has been given limited space to perform in the film as are other pros like Ashutosh Rana and small-screen star Eijaz Khan. But it was a kind of refreshing to see Ravi Kishan in a villainous role. Chandrachur Singh has done a cameo appearance in a film after a long time and even in the short time that he is there on the screen, he switches to and fro to the Haryanvi accent. Vivek Oberoi does romantic scenes in a cheesy manner. There is absolutely no chemistry between him and his on screen beloved played by Charmy Kaur. As an action hero, Vivek fares average marks. Arshad Warsi does his badmash act very well and for a few moments he can even make you hate his character. I could not help noticing the men wearing flaunting Ray Ban aviators in the film. From a goon like Arshad Warsi to junior school teacher Vivek Oberoi who could be earning peanuts are all Ray Ban models in the film. The music by Amjad - Nadeem and the pedestrian lyrics given by Shabbir Ahmed is something that could have been skipped by the makers to make the movie bearable. The cinematography is quite dizzying but thankfully the film has been edited decently. So now the question is whether or not to watch the film? Well, watch it only and only if you don’t have anything more interesting to do this weekend.