![gangs of wasseypur – part 1 gangs of wasseypur – part 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81xPMgkNQFL._SY445_.jpg)
One night, Ramadhir overhears Shahid talking to his son, Sardar Khan, and his cousin, Nasir (Piyush Mishra, the film’s narrator) about his plans to kill Ramadhir and take over the mine himself. He hires a goon named Shahid Khan (Jaideep Ahlawat) to force the local laborers to work in deplorable conditions. After the British depart India in 1947, a young industrialist named Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia) assumes control of the local mine. The plot chronicles a story of revenge that spans multiple generations of two families in the town of Wasseypur. As it exists, Gangs of Wasseypur is a bit too much. There’s so much material in Gangs of Wasseypur that I would have enjoyed it more as two distinct films with two sets of midpoints, climaxes, and denouements. It’s wonderful to watch, but not indefinitely. With that caveat, how does the film stand up as a cohesive work? Director Anurag Kashyap is something of an outlier in Indian cinema due to his willingness to let scenes breathe and unfold at their own pace. If you have the opportunity to watch both parts of Gangs of Wasseypur back-to-back, do it. Like those who saw the film in the theater, I watched the DVDs weeks apart, and I think the viewing experience suffered for it. Gangs of Wasseypur is truly a single film written with a place for a pause in the middle to grab snacks, not for a break of several weeks.
![gangs of wasseypur – part 1 gangs of wasseypur – part 1](https://media.timeout.com/images/149095/630/472/image.jpg)
It’s a decision that makes sense from a distribution standpoint, but it does the film a disservice. When it finally released into theaters (and on DVD), the film was chopped into two halves, released months apart as Gangs of Wasseypur Part I and Part II. Gangs of Wasseypur debuted on the festival circuit as a five-hour-plus Indian crime epic.