Gangstars Review

Gangstars, created by Nandini Reddy, is a quirky comedy set against the backdrop of the Telugu film industry where a chaotic work environment on the sets of a film lands its lead characters in a big mess. The series is about KD - Kumar Das - a notorious gangster (Jagapathi Babu), who will do anything to recover his money from people who owe him. One day, he’s told that he might die soon due to cancer and his world turns topsy-turvy all of a sudden. Since he has amassed a lot of wealth, he’s advised to invest in a movie to turn his black money into white. And this decision intertwines his life with four other principal characters of the show - Ajay (Siddhu Jonnalagadda); Keerthi (Apoorva Arora); Vishwa (Navdeep); and Aishwarya (Shweta Basu Prasad). Gangstars offers some genuine laugh out loud moments as long as it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Among others, there’s Varun Sastry (Mirchi Sastry), a prototype of every filmmaker who wants to be in the good books of the lead cast. Rahul Ramakrishna is one of the primary reasons why Gangstars works, to an extent, and the actor, who shot to fame with Arjun Reddy, brings his verve to the forefront once again. There’s a memorable scene where he recites a few dialogues along with Aishwarya (Shweta Basu Prasad), who loses her cool instantly. If that doesn’t make you chuckle, then there’s very little else that the series offers to make you invest in the characters. The problem is that there’s very little in Gangstars which does justice to what it sets out to achieve. Initially, it begins as a story of KD and his quest to reform himself; and all of a sudden, it becomes a story of Vishwa and Aishwarya’s turbulent relationship, while Ajay and Keerthi grapple with their own feelings for each other. There’s very little backstory to each of the characters and even when the series offers an insight into how much their lives have changed, it doesn’t stay with you. It feels like there are multiple storylines and themes all vying for the same space. In the end, Gangstars feels like a missed opportunity to create something unique and charming.