This is NOT the story of the real Raman Raghav. This is a film set in contemporary times as the character is heavily inspired by the original serial killer. It's about Ramanna aka Raman (Nawazudding Siddiqui) finding his successor in the form of Raghav (Vicky Kaushal) ergo the title Raman Raghav 2.0.
Movie -
Anurag Kashyap & his co-writer are highly ambitious. The story is told in the form of chapters, an interesting way to narrate. Yes let me put it right away, the story they've in hand is not interesting. All the problem is with the writing. The attempt is solely on creating shock, disgust feeling, that the script takes the back seat completely & apart from Nawaz every other character is badly written.
The moment Raman surrenders & starts narrating, we the audience believe him completely. We totally agree that he's a psychopath who has no remorse in killing & we believe the way he justifies all his murders. His dialogues are top notch, though the analogy he makes for his murders is outright crazy, it goes down perfectly well with his character. The attempt is to establish what kind of a psychopath serial killer he is & we are convinced. The problem is with Raghav's character. He's a bad cop who is a drug addict. Apart from this, no other explanation is provided. We know why Raman is a psychopath but just because Raghav is a drug addict we're supposed to believe he's similar to Raman.
The story's pace is worse than snail walking & it only makes it worse. Songs don't help at all. Yes the story is divided into eight chapters, true. But the purpose of those eight chapters is to prove two things - shock the viewers with those ghastly scenes & to show how Raghav transforms into the psychopath, Raman wants him to be. It's the second thing that's not achieved. In one scene, Raman tells he never killed anyone by accident. The writers forget to show Raghav's character that way. He's just a drug addict, who acts crazy. The one acceptable reasoning comes way towards the end & it's too late by then as none of Raghav's acts are justified & no way they can be termed as psychotic.
What makes the movie disgusting is the writers crossing the line just to create shock. The chapter involving sister, yes it had terrific acting, the actors did complete justice, all that is fine. But to what level will you stoop down to just to create the sense of disgust & shock. Raman mouthing those disturbing disgusting lines explaining how he used to rape his sister to his brother-in-law in front of their kid is not something acceptable. No, a brother boasting about how he's thankful for not impregnating his sister isn't remotely necessary. After all the shocking revelations, the sister offering the brother to have sex with her in order to save her husband & child is a BIG NO. There are plenty of movies that has handled incest, spoken about inbreeding etc... never came across such disgusting scenes ever. Extremely cringe-worthy & the writers could've achieved the same in a different way. The original Raman Raghav did rape & murder his sister, we know, but there's a proper way to show even a ghastly thing like that.
Performances -
Nawazuddin Siddiqui is terrifying & lives the character of Ramanna aka Raman. He's the sole saviour of this debacle. Vicky Kaushal has the screen presence but his act is so one-dimensional that the weak characterization just doesn't give him any chance. With the movie titled Raman Raghav, it's indeed a blow to the movie itself with Raghav being a weak character.
Sobhita Dhulipala is good but again weak characterisation just shows her to be a helpless woman being used as a sex object by Raghav. She's shown to be too weak to break off the relationship despite 3 abortions.
Amruta Subhash is honestly very natural as the sister. But that whole chapter is so disgusting, we just wish the writers to have come up with a better treatment to the ordeal her character goes through.
My Rating - 1.5/5
Final Words - Nawazuddin Siddiqui shines in a weak, sick & utterly disgusting movie.
CBFC, take a bow for just reducing the sex scene by 50% yet allowing everything else. Seriously how worse can you get?
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