Film

Gully Boy

Name: Gully Boy
Genre: Music, Drama
Released: 2019
Cast: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Vijay Raaz, Vijay Varma

Musical

A Bombay rapper claws his way up from Dharavi's cramped lanes, spitting out rage about class and survival. Gully Boy pulses with hip-hop energy and genuine anger, anchored by Ranveer Singh's feral intensity and a script that treats its characters' ambitions as heroic, not quaint. It's for anyone who believes music can crack open the world.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a rags-to-rhymes story told through street verses and the grind of a crowded neighbourhood, where the rap battles carry as much weight as the family arguments.

Skip it if you want your music fast and slick, because at 156 minutes it lingers over family rows and cramped domestic scenes between the songs.

What it asks of you: a long sit at 156 minutes, with slow stretches of domestic drama before the verses really kick in, so give it a full evening rather than a background half-hour.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Gully Boy

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

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Straight Outta Compton2015

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The Get Down2016

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Respect2021

Aretha Franklin's rise from preacher's daughter to Queen of Soul. Jennifer Hudson's performance is transcendent, and it captures that moment when art becomes weaponry, when a voice becomes resistance.

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A single date in 1989 between Michelle and Barack Obama. Intimate, tender, about two ambitious people discovering each other and their own hunger. It's about ambition as a form of love.

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But Marathi-language film with limited English accessibility. The pacing is unhurried. It's gentle where Gully Boy is fierce, which might feel like a comedown.

Climax2018

Both hinge on the body and movement as language. Gully Boy is verbal rapture; Climax is kinetic rapture. Same idea of art as ecstasy that becomes catastrophic.

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But It's deliberately disorienting and transgressive. There's real horror. If you need conventional story logic or comfortable morality, don't touch it. Also relentlessly dark.

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Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson, the American writer, poisoned by creative ambition and marital compromise in the 1950s. It's a fever dream about what it costs to make something true. Hypnotic, claustrophobic, furious.

But It's claustrophobic and slow. Moss's character is difficult and unlikeable. The film takes place mostly in one house. If you want narrative momentum or likeable characters, this will frustrate you.