Don't worry, I have two bullets for breakfast every day.

Gunday
Ali Abbas Zafar 2014 India
Starring: Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Irrfan Khan, Darshan Gurjar, Jayesh V. Kardak, Anant Sharma

Ali Abbas Zafar's Gunday is a film of two halves. On the one hand it's an exceptional piece of work, combining a witty script, excellent performances, slick direction and lavish visual extravagance. It's a riot of colour, both comic and dramatic, and takes a variety of Bollywood regularities - brothers (in this case not blood but as close as), betrayal, rule-breaking policemen - and uses them to their full potential instead of just as repetitive and derivative norms. Arjun Kapoor, whose bland performance I so derided in the awful 2 States, is half of the leading duo along with Ranveer Singh and, like Singh, is uniformly brilliant here, going way overboard in the masala tradition whilst still being hilarious, believably crestfallen and brimming with hatred in a plot that, like the Dhoom series, has moments that are utterly ridiculous but is fully aware of their outlandishness and actually revels in it, never taking itself too seriously (or seriously at all in fact). Luckily Zafar is also intelligent enough to realise that he can't simply rest on his outrageous laurels and has made his romance as successful as his knowing smiles, his drama as powerful as his comedy, his emotion as formidable as his explosions. Likewise the action sequences, including fights that travel through windows and floors and take in powerbombs and high kicks, work both as traditional violent battles and entertaining showdowns and the musical sequences are done with tongue bursting through cheek - at one point Irrfan Khan's self-assured cop Satya even walks into one like Gary Cooper, locks eyes with the main dancer, waits then mutters "Finished?" before getting on with what he came for. The chemistry between the four main actors is also superb and the scene where the resplendently beautiful Priyanka Chopra strides into the posturing bandits' lives and immediately reduces them to the level of schoolboys and another featuring Kapoor in an unbuttoned white shirt and slacks emblazoned with giant hearts on the torso and arse wielding a live fish are a joy to watch. The child actors playing the main men in early scenes tracing their origins from youthful gun runners and coal thieves to black market big boys are particularly good as well. But Zafar is also more than comfortable in the film's darker points and intelligently drops in the tragic truth that the friends' lifestyle has rendered Bala (Kapoor) capable of murdering at the smallest provocation without guilt and makes the central revenge plot not so much villainous as understandable and even justifiable. The main problem however is a big one and has caused endless controversy and even calls for the film to be withdrawn. The opening scenes start it off with stock footage explaining the independence of Bangladesh. The main issue is that, just as Zafar implants his central characters into the images and uses their status as Indians who due to government decisions are considered Bangladeshis to explain their mission to take over Calcutta, he inserts his own version of history over the real one, claiming that the war that resulted in East Pakistan's movement to the status of a separate country (Bangladesh) in 1971 was between India and Pakistan when, in actuality, it was a civil war between East and West Pakistan with India only coming in for a short time at the very end on the Eastern side. This unfortunate and frankly arrogant decision has had the consequence of mass protest towards the film (as has the consistent derision towards Bangladeshis in the dialogue) and viewers quite reasonably ignoring the other contents in their disgust. It's a terrible shame not just because the conceit is offensive but also because it's wholly unnecessary. In purely cinematic terms Gunday is undoubtedly the best Bollywood film I've seen this year and very probably one of my top five of 2014 but as a whole its views lower it to just an enjoyable but reprehensible action picture.