Introducing Nikhil Diwedi,Starring Amrita Rao, Pavan Malhotra, Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Lilette Dubey
Directed by E Niwas
Rating: ***

Shakespeare meets Rangeela in this fiercely originally sassy and often enormously intelligent drama about a wannabe Bollywood's star's run-in with the underworld.

The first thing that strikes you while watching this charming concoction of cinema and gangsterism is the language.

E Niwas doesn't resort to any of the clichés associated with street-smart cinema. The guy at the center of the sassy drama is a face you can easily miss in the crowds.

That's the primary charm of viewing My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves (MNIAG). Your pleasure at watching the dreams of a cocky bartender concretize into a Bollywood success-story is never marred by the inherent stardom of the guy playing the dreamer.

Nikhil Diwedi is the archetypal middleclass tapori.A male version of Antara Mali in Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon without the over-the-top hamming. Diwedi's portrayal of the cinematic wannashine works because he doesn't resemble anyone we 've seen before.

Niwas' tongue-in-cheek narrative takes care of the rest. He audaciously brings Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into play. And what a counter-stagy effect he achieves by making this dude from the neighbourhood apply his own first -hand experiences with gangsterism into Shakespeare as he auditions for a part in a desi version of Julius Caesar.

Vishal Bharadwaj, move over!

Creating a conflict between the ancient sacrosanct art of Shakespeare and the purely indigenous kitschy language of Bollywood's pop-art is as tough a dream to realize as some guy called Anthony Gonsalves trying to compete with the Khans and Kapoors of show world.

"Change your name to Anthony Kapoor. If Shahid Kapoor can work so can this name," suggests a cheesy Bollywood wheelerdealer (the talented but underutilized Manoj Pahwa) in the bar where Anthony plays out a large part of his celluloid dreams.

The bar with its thousand sweaty whispers sets the stage for Niwas's noire satire (to coin a new genre for this ultra-cool, sometimes-flabby but never-frail and certainly never-fail film).

And if you thought Sriram Raghavan was cleverly noire-ish in Johnny Gaddar you've to admit E Niwas is endearingly straightforward in his rather complex screen plans of bringing modern-day gangsters into the same range of vision as the wanna-shine who dreams of courting Priyanka Chopra, chats endlessly to his father's grave and even asks his dead father to please welcome the sweet sobbing heroine's newly-dead mother.

The situations are refreshingly untried. The plot avoids the p (l)otholes by staying ahead of the clichés, creating tempting pockets of a world where danger and satire play blood brothers without getting into each other's way.

More than a satire on street-smarts dreams MNIAG is a story of a mentor and a boy he picks up from the streets. This part of the plot, ladies and gentleman, seem to be brought to you by Martin Scorcese's The Departed.

But all resemblance between Jack Nicholson-Matt Damon in Scorcese's film and Pavan Malhotra's troubled tormented mentoring of Nikhil Diwedi in this film, could just be a co-incidence.

MNIAG is a film you WANT to embrace. It has a commodious comic outer layering that fits rather well into the theme of playing out a Bollywood dream.

Some sequences stand out for their sheer inventiveness. Watch Anthony audition for the country-made Julius Caesar in front of a Mira Nair –like NRI filmmaker (Lilette Dubey at her sexiest best).

The way the shots are composed and cut to bring Anthony's personal relationships into his interpretation of the Shakespearean script shows there's no dearth of writing skills in Bollywood today.

What one misses are those interludes that would've taken Niwas's film to a more serious exploration of the Christian community's isolation from the mainstream.

This is no Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai, not only because Niwas pitches the narrative at a far less political far more entertaining level, but a also because Anthony Gonsalves ko gussa aata hi nahin!

Here's a character who's so well-adjusted to his struggle to achieve his dreams he doesn't allow himself to feel the angst of being an orphan selling alcohol to gangsters and other anti-socials in a bar where neon signs flash despair to only those want to be despondent.

Nikhil Diwedi gets into the skin of his character and emerges as quite an engaging boy nextdoor. But the most powerful performance comes from Pavan Malhotra.As the boy's criminally-inclined mentor Pavan pitches in passionately, squirting the sometimes-scattered narrative with a cementing sensitivity.

Anupam Kher as Pavan's guru (this is quite a generation-encompassing theme!) is brilliant as the singing devout clan-head. But one wishes there was more of Mithun as Nikhil's surrogate-father. True confessions in the church melt into a sporadic display of martial arts in the climax. A sketchy character.

By then the wannabe star's bonding with the gangsters has already met with a bloodied nemesis.

Far better than it outwardly seems and with far more resilient powers than most films about gang wars and other wars fought from within, MNIAG deserves a dekko for bringing us debutant Nikhil Diwedi who jumps out of the chocolate box to claim a piece of the fame without window dressings.