Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016)
Bollypedia
After the failure of ‘Bombay Velvet’, Anurag Kashyap is back with a bang and has proved his mettle of being called one of the top directors of Bollywood. In true Anurag Kashyap style, you don’t see any direct violence onscreen. The concept of serial-killers has been attempted before. Both Nawaz and Vicky are brilliant and deserve applause for one of their best performances till date. One simply cannot deny that fact that Nawazuddin Siddiqui is a powerhouse of talent. This time he is back with to give you sleepless nights with this real life story. He sinks into his character so deeply that you tremble in fear each time he gives a blow. Undoubtedly, he is the best choice made for the film!! Vicky Kaushal as a cop has done a good job, but his character is somehow not so strong or we can say it’s not written powerfully. The background score very well suits the scary theme of the movie and adds much more terror to the flick. Though the film lacks a consistent storyline to keep you engaged throughout the duration and also the pace of the movie is a bit slow. But to miss the movie of a director who has changed the landscape of Indian Cinema and an actor who startles us every time with his act, would simply be unfair. You must give it a watch!
Vaishali
Hindustan Times

When watching an Anurag Kashyap film, you know you’ve signed up for a gory, criminal and sinful world. With his latest directorial venture, however, you are not prepared for the gruesome details and shocking twists in the narrative. Ugly, one of Kashyap’s best films till date, is the only other movie that shocks with the stomach-churning cruelty of life. Raman Raghav 2.0 betters that. The film is not about how life treats human beings – it is pure Satan in the form of humans – our protagonists take sadistic pleasure out of hurting others brutally. Both Nawaz and Vicky are brilliant and deserve applause for one of their best performances till date. While Nawaz is a sadist and you hate him right from the start, Vicky is an addict turning scarily violent with every moment. This is no Bollywood-style revenge or angry man plot, it is just pure sadism. Ramanna is purest in his cruelty, and juxtaposed with Raghavan’s uncontrolled violence, he makes the film spine-chilling.

 
Sweta Kaushal
NDTV

Anurag Kashyap is back where he belongs and there is nothing remotely velvety in the director's felicitous return to his creative comfort zone. In Raman Raghav 2.0, he gives the go-by to the lawman versus law-breaker binary, the normative pivot of crime dramas. The film zeroes in on a psychopath's chilling battle of wits, and nerves, with a sleep-deprived, drug-dependent cop in the seedy back alleys of present-day Mumbai. The exercise yields a gripping, visceral genre film that intermittently strays into fuzziness only to lift itself up forcefully enough not to lose momentum. Watching Raman Raghav 2.0 is, therefore, somewhat like reading an incomplete map, with many boundaries and dabs of crucial info either completely missing or too inchoate to decipher. But that isn't such a bad thing. The film demands from its audience more than the usual level of mental focus in order to mark off the units as they flash by with dizzying pace. Raman Raghav 2.0 is a busy string of shots, with a cut every half a minute on an average. Jay Oza's camera paints a murky, acrid portrait of Mumbai. The trance-inducing musical score (Ram Sampath) and the frenetic, fidgety editing rhythm ensure that the mind isn't allowed to settle on any particular stimulus. Extending Kashyap's continuing probe into the horrors of dehumanisation, Raman Raghav 2.0 dives deeper into the cesspit than any of the director's earlier films - to deliver a dystopian study that is at once fascinating and nauseating.

 
Saibal Chatterjee
The Indian Express

That cops and crooks are basically two sides of the same coin is a familiar schtick played out in the movies. That’s what Raman Raghav 2.0, fashioned as a psychological thriller, sets out to do and leaves us with a film that becomes a tough trudge, not just because of its sheer bestiality, but because its road to perdition is rocky. There are some mesmeric bits in here, which belong to Siddiqui. But those are not enough. Without those crucial elements, the film is rendered atmospheric yet hollow, and we are turned into cringing voyeurs, into reluctant participants, without redemption.

 
Shubhra Gupta
The Times of India

Director Anurag Kashyap treads familiar ground with Raman Raghav 2.0. It is overwhelmingly dark with deep macabre undertones. Kashyap gets the moral pendulum oscillating between his prime characters - one a cold-blooded murderer and another who has all the makings of becoming one. He subtly draws parallels between the personalities of his men who stand on opposite sides of the spectrum. Raman beautifully puts it in one of the film's early scenes that after all, he and Raghav are the same people but the police uniform validates or criminalises their actions. The film has its quirks laced with the unmissable dark humour but the writing lacks depth. The characters are uni-dimensional and back stories are weak. Nawaz wears his nonchalance in style but he fails to deliver. Don't be surprised if you see glimpses of his character from Kick laughing hysterically at us. Vicky Kaushal is good but suffers from a poorly sketched character. The biggest problem with Raman Raghav 2.0 is that it glorifies the gore. The climax monologue will run your patience thin. Can you buy the logic that killing for insanity is better than killing in the name of religion? It is crude, callous but in trying to whip up suspense, it loses sight of vulnerability.

 
Mohar Basu
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