The hotshot filmmaker Ram Gopal Verma's latest offering Company is an impressive, taut and riveting tale of the murky ordeals, stealth, intrigue and injustice in the Mumbai's underbelly with the evil city and its deathtrap as its backdrop. Evidently influenced by Francis Ford Coppola's 'Godfather series and Martin Scorsese's Casino', Verma ventures into the excruciating details about the underworld with its tentacles stretching out to far-flung corners of the globe. The evil nature of the city underworld is taken to the extreme when the dangerous power tussle begins and the fight to finish game gets underway through Hong Kong, Nairobi and Mumbai.

Ram Gopal Verma seems to have a fixation with Mumbai's underbelly. The primary difference between Satya and Company is that while the former is a strange love story set against the backdrop of the underworld, the latter is about the underworld itself. Unlike Satya, which relied more on raw appeal and a passionate exploration of individual's fate in Mumbai's underworld, Company breaks the emotional chord by going more objective. Company is more sophisticated yet more amoral than Satya, itself a superbly gritty account of the underworld. The director is trying to bring forth the parallel between a regular company run by regular people and the one run by the underworld. The motive is the same, only the methods differ. Organized crime can be defined as a group of people who have been organized to carry out an unlawful activity with the sole aim of making profit. Just the way it is done in any other company carrying on a business activity.

The world of gangsters comes alive as never before through a series of rapid-fire incidents tied together by a documentary. Ajay Devgan loosely portrays Dawood Ibrahim. Vivek Oberoi hints at being Chotta Rajan and Mohanlal plays former Mumbai's Joint Commissioner of Police Sivanandan. Among the real life incidents the film depicts is the Dawood-Chhotta Rajan rift that vertically split the Mumbai underworld. The second half of the movie is more like a feature film where events lead to soft, logical ends.

The director has become successful in portraying the booze-crazy mistress of Malik, Saroja (Manisha Koirala) Chandu's bride (Antara Mali) and the hapless mother (Seema Biswas). Mohanlal, the incredibly talented Malayalam maverick plays the role of shrewd cop which is a welcome departure from the physically agile super stereotypes. Debutante Vivek Oberoi matches up to the seasoned performers consistently.

Despite its trappings of a popular film, it has several cinematic elements that keep the viewers engrossed. Ram Gopal Verma seems to have tried to jump genres and styles consciously to confuse the audience with a mix of styles. This way, the audience would not know what to expect next. One of the highlights of the film is the absence of a solid and straightforward plot with an emotional core. Instead, the viewers are exposed to a blizzard of events, major and minor, which cumulatively leave the impact of glossy documentary. The frantically cut sequences, endless mobile phone chats, airplane landings, moodily lit interiors and relentless killings galore in this film. Cinematographer Hemant Chaturvedi's camera captures the nuances of violence and death. However, Chandan Arora's editing and Sandeep Chowta's background score leave much to be desired.