Rating :***

Some films exude a cultivated cool. Others are born with it. Sriram Raghavan's "Johny Gaddar" belongs to the category of naturally cool.

Simmering with an urbane discontent and exerting an anxious debate on the power of money to dominate morality, "Johnny Gaddar" is a homage to many things - It's a tribute to R.K. Narayan, as Rimi Sen is caught reading Narayan's "Guide" in the opening sequence, James Hadley Chase, Jyoti Swaroop's "Parwana", Vijay Anand's "Johnny Mera Naam", Ram Gopal Varma ...you name it!

It is a relentlessly rigorous take on the wages of crime and what evil men do to their conscience for the sake of money.

Hamletian in tone and utterly liberated from the artifice that often underlines noire films from Bollywood, "Johnny Gaddar" is a feast of feverish fury harnessed very cleverly.

It's also a cunningly noire-ish homage to some of the most sizzling film songs of the 1970s including "Rama rama ghazab hui gawa" from "Jugnu" and "Bachke kahan jaoge" from "Yakeen" - all remixed by Vishal-Shekhar with sly synergy.

Sometimes a film goes way beyond its prescribed genre in search of a kind of cinematic nirvana that is as tough to achieve as it is for the audience to accept.

Sriram Raghavan's tutorship in the Ram Gopal Varma school of filmmaking has served him well. He does away with all the surface humbug of the noire genre, and comes up with a work that's original in thought, super-original in execution and always a step ahead of the audiences' expectations.

Raghavan makes surprisingly sparse use of technical panache. Less is always more for this articulate filmmaker whose appetite for detailing is immense.

Watch the sequence in the train just before Daya Shetty is murdered. The old lady sharing the compartment with the man who is about to die lends a crucial character-credence to the plot ... Yup, Hitchcock would approve.

The contours of the narration are flexible yet firm, as a young gangster Vikram (debutant Neil Mukesh Mathur) tries to break from a life of crime ... but only after a carefully planned betrayal that leaves Vikram's guru (Dharmendra) dead on the floor.

Neil plays the amoral Romeo with icy steadfastness, going from betrayal to betrayal, his eyes not giving away anything. It's a brave and thoroughly unconventional debut for this engaging actor. Neil sinks his teeth into the complex character with focused intensity.

The rest of the performances range from the extraordinary to the exceptional. Vinay Pathak's dexterity with the cards in the gambling scenes are matched by Zakir Hussain's power to create dilemma out of treachery.

And falling in the extraordinary category is Ashwini Kalsekar as Vinay Pathak's wife. Though the character derives inspiration from Shefali Shah in Ram Gopal Varma's "Satya", Ashwini gives it her own interpretation.

"Johnny Gaddar" isn't outstanding in the context of how far it takes the gangster-noire genre. But in narrating the underbelly of betrayal in a language that's calm, controlled and constantly compelling, Raghavan's work is next to none.

One of the most gripping tales of crime and retribution, "Johnny Gaddaar" calls the bluff of all the other recent 'cool' crime capers that have hit Bollywood.