Three years back, Ram Pothineni arrived during the Sankranti season with an action thriller titled ‘RED’. The movie did decent business despite not reaching the expectations of the viewers. This movie was a remake of Arun Vijay’s Tamil hit flick ‘Thadam’. Bollywood, who has been relying a lot on remakes lately has made this film in Hindi with Aditya Roy Kapoor as the hero. The movie is titled ‘Gumrah’ and Mrunal Thakur did the police officer’s role while Nivetha Pethuraj did in Telugu. Despite the national holiday, all it managed to get on the first day is just 1 crore.
New director Vardhan Ketkar made this film and the story revolves around two identical people who get investigated regarding a murder case. Who ends up being the criminal forms the rest of the story. Ram’s acting and Kishore Tirumala’s taking made it work in Telugu while it didn’t happen in Hindi.
The lack of a tight screenplay and Aditya Roy Kapoor’s over-the-top histrionics worked against the movie. Mrunal Thakur who is a good performer failed to make an impact despite getting a meaty role. Instead of the thrilling experience, one gets a feeling that they are watching a mass masala flick. Songs are a big minus as none of them were catchy. Interestingly, most of the North Indian people watched ‘Thadam’ and ‘RED’ as their dubbed versions are available in YouTube. The Hindi makers did not consider it and remade the story as ‘Gumraah’ after such a long time. This shows the level of ignorance in Bollywood and it lead to another big failure for Bollywood this year.