Once upon a time, a very general phrase that was used hundreds of time during our childhood days, from grandparents to the chuddy-buddies, to the school teacher, whenever they start to narrate a story. The nostalgia of the phrase looks like it has revisited with the Milan Lutharia’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbai. Ironically, in all the stories of our childhood days we had good men winning over the evil intentions but never we have heard evil against evil, we have never taught that lesser evil succumbs to the greater and powerful evil of the story or in a word we never get to read evilest prevails over evil!

Once Upon A Time In Mumbai is a tale set up in the 70’s when Mumbai used to be Bombay, when the dreamland used to be the homeland of smugglers and gangsters but within them there was a man who ruled over them yet he loved Mumbai, he loved its people who were destined to end up in poverty and toil.

The film is in way salutes the serenity of 70’s, the lighting effect romances with the dressing and looks of the cast, the surroundings mesmerizes you with its simplicity and dialogues leave you spell bound as soon as you meet the eyes of Sultan Mirza (Ajay Devgan), the prodigy who sets up the celluloid brewing and you are left asking for him in every frame.

It has been said that your good doings can save you many a times in life but not always, your bad days keep following you until they revenge with your life for your deeds. Crime is crime even if out of that you do great services to poor and needy. And the same happens with Mirza when he leaves everything into the hands of Shoaib Khan (Emran Hashmi), a delinquent son of a cop who saw Mirza growing from dock to the peak of crime and powerful world and wants to be no lesser than him, if not better him. Shoaib’s shrewdness and clever attributes drove him to manage what Mirza declined to bow to save Mumbai from the sickness of poverty and dejection.

Shoaib reaches where he wanted to, to his ambition of becoming a “DON”, even if it asks the price of his inspiration – Mirza – and he decides to kill him, when Mirza was in an election meeting. Many would debate over the ending of the film, a man so powerful like Mirza ended up so grossly in the day light in front of the people he always helped and the culprit swiftly made out his way to the King’s seat of Crime. However, it is a real fact that in the war of evils only the powerful and shrewd wins and Shoaib was an example of this anti-climax!