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Department Movie Review
Ratings:1.5/5 Reviewer:Rajeev Masand Site:CNN IBN
If there's a point to Ramgopal Varma's 'Department', I'm afraid I missed it. There's a good chance I might have been distracted by his relentlessly dizzy camera. Just shy of two hours and thirty minutes, 'Department' is tedious and boring and doesn't have any of the originality of 'Satya' and 'Company', or even the occasional tension of 'Sarkar'. Dutt delivers his lines like he's reading out the phone book, and Bachchan hams it up no end as the gangster-turned-minister. It's only Rana Dagubatti who approaches the film with any earnestness whatsoever.I'm going with one-and-a-half out of five for Ramgopal Varma's 'Department'. It's a lazy, indulgent film that tests your threshold for painVisit Site for more
Ratings:2/5 Reviewer:Taran Adarsh Site:Bollywood Hungama
The issue with DEPARTMENT is *not* the beaten to death genre, but the screenplay that has nothing novel to offer. Encounter specialists, ruthless gangsters, inter-gang rivalry, corrupt politicians… haven't we had our fill already? One could never lay blame on RGV for taking the tried and tested route, opting for easy shortcuts while narrating a story. But, in DEPARTMENT, all you remember is style, while the substance goes for a toss. DEPARTMENT is soaked in high-voltage drama and action, with a consistent undercurrent of tension. As a matter of fact, there's an overdose of action in the film, though, I must admit, a few action pieces, especially the final showdown between Sanju and Rana, is deftly executedOn the whole, DEPARTMENT is neither novel, nor experimental, but a return to the tried and tested formula. Disappointing!Visit Site for more
Ratings:2/5 Reviewer:Srijana Mitra Das Site:Times Of India
Like other Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) films, Department has an idea - a force to finish the underworld by stepping over the law's boundaries. But like other RGV flicks, this one also blasts itself out of the water, leaving you savouring jarring camerawork, flimsy acting and over-the-top violence. Department, which should've been a taut, tense encounter between three strong men, is instead ripped to shreds by too many weak actors given puzzlingly large roles. The violence might even have clicked, considering the tale's twists - but crazy camerawork makes you forget all that.Losing the plot and three strong stars, Department shoots itself in the foot.Visit Site for more
Ratings:1/5 Reviewer:Raja Sen Site:Rediff
Varma, predictably, has fun with a couple of quirky lines -- especially one that blatantly introduces Nathalia Kaur's item number, a cameltoe-y milestone for Bollywood -- and a scene with the camera mounted on the striker on a carrom-board is genuinely imaginative, but Department is an utter waste. The director who showed us how to film violence is now sucking basic action scenes of their dynamism, leaving them dry and dead, but filming his movie's carcass from multiple angles. Tragically enough, Satya and Shiva are just names of characters for the new Ramu.Visit Site for more
Ratings:2/5 Reviewer:Anupama Chopra Site:Hindustan Times
his films repeatedly return to the theme of power - who wields it, how they get it and how they inevitably lose it. Department, about a special task force of encounter specialists, begins with this adage: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. After that, Varma retreads old ground: crooked cops, underworld dons, political leaders who function like underworld dons. Varma has described Department as "Quentin Tarantino meets Prabhudeva." I honestly couldn't find flashes of either. To me, it felt more like pedestrian Ram Gopal Varma. We are still waiting for him to return to form.Visit Site for more
Ratings: -1/5 Reviewer:Kunal Guha Site:Yahoo
The only appreciable thing about ‘Department’ is that it drifts away from one thing that is common in every gangster movie produced in Bollywood: it doesn’t morally question gangsters for their ganging operations nor does it celebrate that fact.Why veteran actors like Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt chose to do this film is probably hidden at the bottom of a glass that contained something very toxic. While they manage their individual parts with little enthusiasm and lot of ease, there’s only as much that one can lend to a script like this. Braving this 132-minute brain-jerker just to learn how politicians, cops and the underworld are interwoven enough to share the same 'department' may be a futile cause.Visit Site for more
Ratings:1/5 Reviewer:Shubhra Gupta Site:Indian Express
Varma returns to his favourite theme of underworld and cops, mixes in bits of Ab Tak Chappan, a dash of Sarkar, and camera angles focused more on gun barrels than the guy holding the weapon to present a bloody pot-pourri that has plenty in way of death -- from heads being banged so hard against a wall so as to make a depression in it, to people being stomped under feet, to kids being thrown off balconies -- and little in way of a story.Visit Site for more
Ratings:1/5 Reviewer:Zee News Site:Zee News
If you’d thought ‘Phoonk’ and ‘Aag’ were the worst of films to have come out of the Ram Gopal Varma camp, it’s time you rethought about it. ‘Department’ takes the ridiculous story-telling skills of the filmmaker a notch above his previous ones. Or below, for that matter.Watch ‘Department’ if you have been missing your headaches for a long time. Watch ‘Department’ to see the way in which brilliant actors can be wrung dry and left skill-less. And above all, watch ‘Department’ if you are an ardent Ram Gopal Varma fan. And then leave the theatre cursing yourself for watching this brilliantly crafted piece of – well, by now – you know what.Visit Site for more
Ratings:1.5/5 Reviewer:Daily Bhaskar Site:Dainik Bhaskar
As the first few minutes of the film go by, one is aware what a nerve-wracking experience 'The Department' is going to be. The multiple meaningless sub-plots, along with a poor characterization bore one to death. What compounds to the misery, are the distractive camera moves which leave on clueless about the story.Department somehow, survives on the strong shoulders of Amitabh Bachchan, few but meaningful dialogues post interval and a good concept are the strong points. Poor script, bad screenplay, meaningless direction along with cinematography and music make Department a disaster.On the whole, Department falls flat at almost every department; so, needless to say, it's a flick which can easily be given a miss.Visit Site for more
