Kaminey () is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language crime thriller film written and directed by Vishal Bhardwaj and produced by Ronnie Screwvala under UTV Motion Pictures, featuring Shahid Kapoor in a dual role, alongside Priyanka Chopra and Amole Gupte in the lead roles. Set against the backdrop of the Mumbai underworld, Kaminey follows a rivalry between a pair of twins, one with a lisp and the other with a stutter, over the course of a single day.
Bhardwaj bought the original script of Kaminey for from Kenyan writer Cajetan Boywhom he had mentored at a scriptwriting workshop in Uganda, later collaborating with screenwriters Sabrina Dhawan, Abhishek Chaubey and Supratik Sen to modify it. Kaminey was released on 14 August 2009 and became a box-office success worldwide, grossing over against a production and marketing budget of . The film's soundtrack album, composed by Bhardwaj, also became a commercial success, with the song "Dhan Te Nan" topping the charts on various platforms.
Kaminey received widespread critical acclaim, with several critics and media publications placing it at number one on their listings of "Best film of the year". Since its release, the film has attained cult status. It received several awards and nominations at ceremonies across India. At the 55th Filmfare Awards, it received ten nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor; it won the award for Best Special Effects. At the 57th National Film Awards, Kaminey won two awards — Best Audiography for Subash Sahoo and Special Jury Award for its editing by A. Sreekar Prasad.
Plot
Charlie Sharma and Sanjay "Guddu" Kumar Sharma are twins who were raised in Mumbai. Charlie lisps while Guddu stutters. Charlie likes to take shortcuts to fulfill his dream of becoming a bookmaker at the racecourse, where he works for three criminal brothers who fix races. He is closer to the youngest brother Mikhail than to Guddu, to whom he is hostile. A jockey deceives Charlie when he bets on a horse during a fixed race, losing all of his savings. Seeking revenge, Charlie locates the jockey in an upmarket city hotel.
At the same hotel, policemen Lobo and Lele kill three drug dealers and collect a guitar case containing cocaine, which they must deliver to drug lord Tashi. Charlie and his men invade the jockey's hotel room and take all his possessions. The ensuing chase leads to the hotel car park, where Lobo and Lele are placing the guitar case in their van. Charlie and his men seize the van to escape from the jockey's men and realise they have stolen a police vehicle, whilst also discovering the cocaine, which Charlie steals to sell. The policemen, upon returning, discover that the cocaine is missing and set out to find Charlie.
Meanwhile, Guddu's lover, Sweety, sister of the politician Sunil Shekhar Bhope, reveals that she is pregnant with Guddu's child and expresses her wish to marry Guddu. They marry later that night. Bhope hears about his sister's actions and sends his men to apprehend the lovers. Bhope's men gatecrash Guddu's wedding and beat him, only to realise that he is a migrant from Uttar Pradesh. This enrages Bhope, who orders his men to kill Guddu and return Sweety to his house so he can arrange a marriage for her. Sweety fights off her brother's henchmen and escapes with Guddu.
Charlie tells Mikhail about the cocaine, who is delighted. When Charlie returns to retrieve the case, Bhope and his men are waiting inside the van. One of Bhope's men recognises Guddu as Charlie's twin, and Bhope demands that Charlie reveal Guddu's whereabouts. An inebriated Mikhail interrupts their conversation and is killed by Bhope.
On the way to the airport, Guddu realises that Sweety has faked her stutter. At a petrol station, Lobo and Lele notice the pair. Mistaking Guddu for Charlie, they arrest him. They assault Guddu, refusing to believe that he is Charlie's twin brother until Guddu's mobile phone rings; the caller is revealed to be Bhope. Lobo and Lele agree to exchange Charlie for Guddu and Sweety on a train. The policemen take Guddu and Sweety to Bhope's house, where Bhope reveals that a local builder will pay him to marry Sweety to the builder's son. Guddu bargains with Bhopeif he retrieves the cocaine-filled guitar case for Bhope, he will get Sweety. Bhope sends his henchmen with Guddu to retrieve the guitar case from Charlie's house.
The policemen assault Charlie, who refuses to negotiate, realising that the policemen are in as much trouble as himself. Charlie outwits the policemen, takes them hostage, and negotiates with Tashi to exchange the guitar case for . Charlie sends the policemen to deliver the details to Tashi and returns to his house to retrieve the cocaine. At Charlie's house, Guddu arrives with Bhope's men. Sweety hears about Bhope's plans to kill Guddu and shoots at the members of her household. Guddu finds the case and fights Charlie, who lets Guddu go. Guddu takes the cocaine to the police, who bug him. Guddu arrives at Bhope's house at the same time as Tashi and his gang, with Charlie as their hostage. Bhope and Tashi negotiate to trade the drugs, but Charlie snatches the guitar case and threatens to destroy it if Guddu and Sweety are not released. The lovers escape as the police arrive, leading to a shooting spree in which the cocaine is destroyed. Charlie's bosses arrive to avenge Mikhail's death but are killed along with Bhope, Tashi, and their henchmen. Charlie is shot and wounded.
Sweety gives birth to Guddu's twins, and Charlie opens a bookmaking counter at the racecourse. Charlie is engaged to Sophia, a woman earlier featured in his dream.
Cast
Production
Development
During a scriptwriting workshop held by Mira Nair in 2005, Cajetan Boy, a Kenyan writer from Nairobi, showed Vishal Bhardwaj a script about twin brothers from the city's slums and the events that occur in their lives during a 24-hour period. Bhardwaj liked Boy's approach to the script; Nair and Bhardwaj discussed it and thought it was a typical Bollywood masala film. Boy sent Bhardwaj another draft of his script. Three years later, Bhardwaj asked Boy to sell him the idea, and he later bought the script for US$4,000. Bhardwaj revisited the idea and added some Bollywood elements and a dark, serious side to the script. He worked on the original idea with writers Sabrina Dhawan, Abhishek Chaubey and Supratik Sen. He included Dhawan in writing the screenplay as he thought she would give it a "solid structure". Bhardwaj said that during the writing of the screenplay, most of the original ideas were changed and the climax was "Indianized". His re-worked version now included one brother with a stammer and the other with a lisp. Bhardwaj said that despite the complicated structure, Kaminey is "anything but arty" and could not alienate audiences in any part of India, and that it is a simple story but with a complicated structure. Dhawan said that the film's script was complex and has multiple stories which required excessive writing and rewriting to make each character sound distinct.
The media showed concern over the film's title, deeming it "odd", and some people were shocked because of the title, which can be translated into English as "mean". However, the makers said that is not a negative term and is actually a term of endearment. According to Bhardwaj, the idea for the title came from a scene from Gulzar's Ijaazat (1987), in which the lead actor (Naseeruddin Shah) refers to the actress in a loving manner; it was the first time that he heard the word used that way. Bhardwaj told Rediff, "when the script of this film was written, it was like discovering your own mean side. The format of the film is of a caper and all the characters in this film, excluding one, has an agenda. So I thought it was an apt title for the film".
Casting
Shahid Kapoor was cast in the film's lead role. Several media outlets reported that Bhardwaj considered many actors before casting Kapoor in the role, which he refused. Bhardwaj refuted the claims, saying, "There is a huge difference between discussing and narrating and offering someone a film and I would like to clear up the rumour by saying that Kaminey was never offered to anyone else and so no one rejected it." Kapoor said that he accepted the role after reading the script. Priyanka Chopra was cast to play Sweety, the lead female role. She initially turned down the role, saying she felt it was a boys' film and her eight-scene part did not seem good enough. However, Bhardwaj persuaded her to accept the role.
The idea for casting the screenwriter Amole Gupte came from the casting director Honey Terhan. Gupte said that when he received a call from Trehan, he thought it was a joke. He stated, "A man named Honey introduced himself as Vishal Bhardwaj's casting director and offered me a very important role. I banged the phone down not believing a word of what he said". However, after meeting Bhradwaj and hearing a script reading, he loved the story and accepted the offer. The actors Chandan Roy Sanyal, Shiv Subramnayam, Hrishikesh Joshi, Rajatava Dutta and Deb Mukherjee were cast in supporting roles. For the role of drug dealer Tashi, Bhardwaj chose his friend Tenzing Nimaa tour operator in Mussooriesaying he had the character and attitude he wanted, and a weird sense of humour.
Characters
Bhardwaj instructed the film's entire cast and crew to watch caper classics such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000), Pulp Fiction (1994) and True Romance (1993) to study the nuances and become familiar with the genre. Shahid Kapoor played both Charlie and Guddu, twin brothers with speech impediments; Charlie has a lisp and Guddu stammers. The producers did not want them to look like caricatures, so Kapoor prepared for both roles by meeting and interacting with speech therapists and people with these impediments. According to Kapoor, the producers wanted to find out about the medical reasons for the impediments and their mental effects. They met specialists and thoroughly researched stammering and lisping. Kapoor said that each role had its own challenges. Charlie's physique was very different from Kapoor's and it took him nearly a year to change the look of his body. He found changing from one character to the other difficult.
Chopra described her character Sweety as "feisty and vivacious". She said, "Sweety is very busy, and does not have time to take care of her looks and apply make up. Her only aim in life is to bunk her lectures and visit her boyfriend's college or stay in his hotel, and eventually marry him." Chopra described both her character and herself as being "outspoken and fun-loving" as well as honest and unable to "hide something that is wrong". She said she had a different cultural background to Sweety, and found it challenging to convincingly portray a Maharashtrian Marathi girl. She had to adopt body language and a Maharashtrian accent to suit the character. She learnt the Marathi Language to make the character as authentic as possible, which she found difficult. Chopra said: "I am speaking a lot of Marathi in the film. It was difficult for me because it's a difficult language and I am not good at Marathi. But I think it's my luck that through Kaminey I got to learn one more language."