[PSYCHO RAMAN
screens Wednesday April 5th at 4:35 pm and Friday April 7th at 9:20 pm at Tower
City Cinemas as part of the 41st Cleveland International Film Festival.]
Review by Bob Ignizio
The Indian film industry is best known for their vibrant
"Bollywood" musicals. Indian writer/director Anurag Kashyap makes
very different kinds of films. His 2012 film GANGS OF WASSEYPUR was an epic (5 hours-plus) tale of
generation-spanning crime that drew from Scorsese and Coppolla for inspiration. It won numerous awards and made it onto many "best of the
year" lists.
PSYCHO RAMAN
(original title: RAMAN RAGHAV 2.0)
is a crime film of a different sort. It's a wallow on the dark side that
focuses on serial killer Ramanna (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and the coke-addicted,
misogynistic cop Raghavan (Vicky Kaushal) pursuing him. The solitary Ramanna
sees his soulmate in the corrupt policeman, a man cloaked in the respectability
of the law who, deep down inside, may be just as evil as his quarry. Maybe even
moreso. Comparisons to Abel Ferrara's BAD
LIEUTENANT and Jee-woon Kim's I SAW
THE DEVIL are not unreasonable, but ultimately RAMAN is its own brutal beast.
