Mumbai Saga

Mumbai Saga is a 2021 Indian Hindi-language action crime film directed by Sanjay Gupta and produced by T-Series. It features an ensemble cast of John Abraham, Emraan Hashmi, Kajal Aggarwal, Mahesh Manjrekar, Rohit Roy, Anjana Sukhani, Prateik Babbar, Samir Soni, Amole Gupte and Gulshan Grover. Set in the '80s and '90s, Mumbai Saga shows changing phases of Mumbai by closing mills to make malls and high-rise buildings.

Mumbai Saga was released theatrically on 19 March 2021 and underperformed commercially as collections were affected by the resurgence in COVID-19 pandemic cases which had led to a night curfew and lockdown imposition in Maharashtra.

Plot
In mid-1980s Mumbai, Amartya Rao Naik belongs to a lower middle class family and his father sells vegetables at a railway overbridge. All the vendors are forced to pay protection money to gangster Gaitonde. One day, some of the Gaitonde's henchmen assault Amartya's teenage brother Arjun. Enraged, Amartya thrashes the entire gang. He is then arrested by the police and subjected to further abuse by Gaitonde's henchmen. He is able to fight them all and earns the respect of criminal Nari Khan, who warns Gaitonde of any further action.

Amartya soon receives bail through 'Bhau', the party leader of the local Chatrapati Sena which is known for its violent ways and scouts for muscle men like Amartya. With Bhau's enimity towards Gaitonde, Amartya meets Nari's key aide and gets information on Gaitonde's operations, where he attacks his men and is able to confiscate all his arsenal. Later, Amartya secures a bail for Nari and also threatens Gaitonde to get out of his way. Gaitonde realizes his diminishing strength and resents to his fate. Amartya gets uninhibited control of the city with Bhau's help.

Amartya sends Arjun to a boarding school to keep him away from his path of violence. Years later, Arjun is married to his childhood friend Seema, who arranges now grownup Arjun's marriage to his sweetheart Nilam and sends the newlywed couple to London again, intending to keep him away from Amartya's criminal life. Meanwhile, Gaitonde has now struck a deal with a mill owner Sunil Khaitan as he plans to oust the mill workers in order to utilize the mill land for a large reality project to take advantage of the newly liberalized economy. Wary of Gaitonde's rapid attempts to rise again, Amartya kills Khaitan after he refuses to heed his warnings.

Arjun returns to India and is attacked by Gaitonde's men as retribution to Khaitan's murder; on the other hand, Khaitan's wife Sonali announces a bounty of ₹10 crore to any policeman who kills Amartya. Inspector Vijay Savarkar leads an investigation into Amartya's case and gets hold of Sadashiv, a weakling of Amartya's gang. Sadashiv rats on his colleagues and Vijay is able to kill 4 of them. Arjun correctly suspects Sadashiv as the rat to verify this, Amartya asks Sadashiv to meet him at a park. He reaches there disguised as a taxi driver and spots policemen prepared for an ambush. Coincidentally, Vijay hires his taxi for his office and they greet each other as Vijay leaves his taxi.

Later, Arjun kills Sadashiv, who was under police protection, bribes the constables and shoots one of them in the arm to project it as an ambush. Bhau advises Amartya to leave the country since Khaitan's death, coupled with the "ambush" on the police, has put a lot of pressure on the police force to find him and it is not safe for him to stay in the city anymore. Amartya leaves for London and Arjun now runs the gang. Vijay gets a court order against Arjun under the TADA act, and warns him against absentia, stating that he would get an encounter order from the court by default and would be free to kill him even in public place. Arjun is shot by Gaitonde's man when he appears in the court, but survives the attack and becomes permanently paralyzed.

An angry Amartya returns to India despite Bhau's warnings and rescues Arjun from the police, and prepares to take him to London for treatment. Vijay extracts Amartya'a whereabouts from Gaitonde and tries to nab him but gets brutally beaten by Amartya. It is then revealed that Vijay is an ex party supporter of Bhau and was promoted in the police force at his behest. Amartya meets Bhau and requests him to pull Vijay off his track, and Bhau obliges, but reveals to Vijay that Amartya's time as a crime boss is over. On a desolate runway, Khan arrives on a chartered flight to take Arjun and Amartya to UK, but they are attacked by Vijay. Gunfire ensures with Amartya, and he explodes a petrol tanker with Vijay in it. Amartya manages to get Arjun on the aircraft just as Vijay reappears and shoots him, but Khan makes away with Arjun.

The film ends with Bhau handing over the same privileges Amartya had to another goon, with a note on what happens to Arjun later.

Special appearances

 * Yo Yo Honey Singh in the song "Shor Machega"
 * Hommie Dilliwala in the song "Shor Machega"
 * Shruti Sinha in the song "Shor Machega"

Production
Principal photography commenced on 27 August 2019 in Mumbai and also took place in Hyderabad. The film wrapped up in October 2020.

Soundtrack
The film's music was composed by Yo Yo Honey Singh, Payal Dev and Tanishk Bagchi while lyrics written by Hommie Dilliwala, Yo Yo Honey Singh, Prashant Ingole and Manoj Muntashir.

Box office
Mumbai Saga earned ₹2.82 crore at the domestic box office on its opening day. On the second day, the film had a slight dip as it collected ₹2.40 crore. It recovered on the third day by collecting ₹3.52 crore, taking the total domestic opening weekend collection to ₹8.74 crore.

, with a gross of ₹19.68 crore in India and ₹2.61 crore overseas, the film has a worldwide gross collection of ₹22.29 crore.

Critical response
Taran Adarsh gave the film 3.5 out of 5 stars calling Mumbai Saga "Power-Packed" and wrote, "Action-packed entertainer with powerful dialogue and terrific performance by John Abraham and Emraan Hashmi".

Conversely, Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave the film 1.5 out of 5, writing, "Except for Gupte, who is clearly enjoying himself, reminding one of similar roles he has played before, there really is no one who is self-aware enough to carry off this saga."