It’s a film by someone who can see Mumbai with indigenous eyes. Scratch the filters and it’s as raw as it always was.
Show patience in the second half, and it may work for you. There’s a lot to like in Banjo.

If you are familiar with Mumbai’s working-class neighbourhoods, where the hearts of the poor are bigger than the pay packages of those residing in the mushrooming high-rises, you’ll be able to notice the beauty of Banjo. It also makes you respect the street musicians a little more.

Interesting music pieces(Vishal-Shekhar), a furiously implosive background score(SouravRoy) and a principal cast that believes in the plot’s quintessential rags-to-riches logic tends to keep the storytelling afloat.However Banjo is unlikely to set the  boxoffice on fire. Its energy remains half-doused by over-statement.

While the first half of the film is simply super, the second half undoes a lot of the expectations. The high emotional quotient drains away into cliché-ridden melodrama, abrupt ends to some threads and a truly hurried ending. Such endings usually are caused by unsure scripts and directions or severe budgetary constraints, but here it looks as if some practical exigencies led to such contretemps, like, maybe, Nargis Fakhri’s absence from India for a while!