Series Review: Guns & Gulaabs [Guns & Roses]

Starring: Rajkummar Rao, Dulquer Salmaan, Adarsh Gourav, Satish Kaushik, Vipin Sharma, T.J. Bhanu

Creators: Krishna DK, Raj Nidimoru

A title that is inspired by the name of a famous rock band implies a certain quirkiness of subject matter and the look and feel of this new Netflix series seems to offer just that.

Tipu (Rao) is a small-town mechanic and reluctant gangster, determined to be nothing like his late criminal father. However, as situations unfold out of his control, he finds himself drawn towards the very violence he thought he abhorred. Having initially turned down any plans to join the local drug lord Ganchi (Kaushik), Tipu eventually finds himself smack bang in the middle of the criminal gang’s murderous activities.

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In parallel, Arjun Varma (Salmaan) is the ostensibly honest cop who has entered the fictional Gulabganj town as the anti-narcotics chief on a mission to clean up the opium trade. On the face of it, he looks like a decent family man with an adoring wife and a teenage daughter. But gradually some of his past mistakes begin to come back to haunt him.

Will Varma manage to overcome these hiccups and hold on to his ethics to achieve the drugs clean-up mission? And, will Tipu succeed in winning over the love of the Lekha (Bhanu) despite, or in fact because of, his criminal connections?

This is a complex series that at times seems to lose its way with overly complicated twists and turns. While it opens with a gruesome yet promising start, it soon meanders through into multiple storylines that don’t quite seem to sync together in harmony.

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The characters also fail to make a mark in their roles that may have seemed more well etched on paper but don’t quite translate as well on screen.

On the whole, this series does not quite fall into the bingeworthy category but is quite watchable for its moments of dark humour and the nostalgic Bollywood lens through which it has been shot.