Company (India, 2002)
Directed by: Ram Gopal Varma
Starring: Vivek Oberoi, Ajay Devgan, Manisha Koirala, Antara Mali, Mohanlal

Shouldering its way to the front of the crowd and demanding to be taken on its own terms, COMPANY is the epic saga of the rise and fall of a criminal cartel and the men and women who ran it. Combining Francis Ford Coppola¹s panoramic sweep and Martin Scorsese¹s delicate touch with actors, director Ram Gopal Varma delivers the greatest and grandest crime story to hit the screens since Goodfellas.

Cold as the flicker of a cobra¹s tongue, Malik (dead-eyed, Ajay Devgan) recruits slum-thug, Chandu (Vivek Oberoi), to beef up his side in an internal war. The two come out on top and build an international business on a mountain of dead bodies. That the business consists of extortion, murder, and movie producing just means that they¹re competing in the big leagues.

This gangsta hip hopera is a technical triumph featuring an ensemble cast of hot-headed Sikhs, movie-mad Muslims, pacifist getaway drivers, lazy brothers, blissfully ignorant mothers, and girlfriends who are hopelessly in love with men who are hopelessly bad. Virtuoso sequences are thrust at the viewer like fistfulls of candy: rainy hits, subterranean negotiations, blood-slimed power plays, and a bravura sequence which proves that while the cell phone is mightier than the gun, the gun is a lot more satisfying.

And the musical numbers! Boasting only two, one is a James Bondian credit sequence performed by Urmila Matondkar, Ram Gopal Varma¹s usual leading lady. Rumor has it that she saw a cut of the film and demanded to be included. The other is "Khallas", a slinky, J-Lo-in-a-dirty-way, nightclub number. Despite only two actual dance sequences, COMPANY throbs and hums with music: on the soundtrack, on the radio, blaring out of loudspeakers, burbling over cell phones.

Stretching from India, to Hong Kong, to Switzerland, to Kenya, COMPANY is a modern epic about crime as a capitalist enterprise: if they won¹t buy what you¹re selling, put a gun to their head; if they won¹t sell what you¹re buying, pull the trigger and pry it from their fingers.