Johnny Gaddaar (Johnny the Traitor)

Vikram decides to elope with his girlfriend Mini for a better life. For this purpose he decides to steal the money collected by his business partners for a drug deal. Everything goes horribly wrong.

This is a very stylized movie in the vein of Bob le Flambeur or Rififi. Which is to say it is an homage to French neo-noir while being a wonderful example of that very thing. Both of those movies were more about the people than the crime. This is no different.

We were simultaneously absorbed by the plot while appreciating the nice touches of Bollywood homage embedded throughout the film — at least those we could pick up on such as everyone's adoration of Amitabh Bachchan or Twinkle being Vikram's girlfriend's phone name. Not being Indian we knew there were countless things we missed. 

Definitely recommended and you don't have to be a Bollywood fan to appreciate this film. It is Hollywood quality, despite coming from India. It turns out that we'd seen another film by this director — Andhadhun. Those two are enough to make us eager to see his other  three  films. 

Access Bollywood has a good review with this observation which enriched the movie for me.

There’s another theme in the film about the nature of love, namely that Vikram doesn’t know what real love is. How can he be sure of his feelings for Mini or her feelings for him when they developed under duress? Vikram protests to Seshadri that their love is real, and Seshadri just shrugs.

Seshadri is one of multiple examples of what true love is that Vikram ignores in pursuit of his affair. Widowed Seshadri reminisces while listening to a recording of his wife singing. Prakash dotes on his wife, Varsha (Ashwini Kalsekar), a proud working mom. Shiva has a sweet, budding romance with the nurse who cares for his ailing mother. Shardul doesn’t seem like such a bad husband to Mini, at least by mafia-film standards. He comes home and wants to catch up on the day with his wife...

I totally missed that the first time around but will be looking for it when I watch again.

It's not for everyone and you'll know within the first ten minutes whether it is something you don't like. However, if you're unsure — as we were — let it keep going and you might wind up liking it as much as we did. 

Rating — Introduction to Bollywood (come on in, the water's fine!) This one is difficult if you're not ready for neo-noir, but that's completely independent of Bollywood.