Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster is a delightfully wicked and raunchy bedroom thriller where the best part is the anticipation of the next naughty and sharp twist, and then the next one.
The film’s title is a giveaway. We sort of guess what’s going to happen, and yet Tigmanshu Dhulia’s film packs in fascinating surprises en route to its twisted end.

In Deogarh, Uttar Pradesh, in an old, decaying haveli, live Saheb, his Biwi and a handful of minions.
Saheb, Aditya Pratap Singh (Jimmy Shergill), is a finicky, haughty aristocrat with a stylish wardrobe and demeanour that comes with blue blood. But he occupied this haveli thanks to the kindness of his father’s lover, Badi Rani. She’s still around, very much in control and would like it if Saheb called her Ma. But Saheb can’t get himself to even be polite in her company, and that’s why when he asks for the haveli’s papers, he receives teeny, demeaning crumbs.
Saheb has other means. He makes money from government tenders — for mining, road construction, building bridges. There's big money to be made, but also deadly rivals. Most of Saheb's men have been bumped off by Gainda Singh (Vipin Sharma), save the eagle-eyed sharpshooter, Kanhaiya.
Watching the lowly Gainda Singh rise in stature, get close to the relevant minister (Rajiv Gupta) is too humiliating for Saheb, so when he gets a chance to settle scores, he coolly plots and commissions a couple of murders over breakfast.
Saheb’s wife, his second one, Chhoti Rani (Mahie Gill), interrupts this breakfast meeting. Her eager informality with his business acquaintance is almost vulgar in Saheb’s world of aloof royalty. Chhoti Rani is ill and needs to go on long drives with her pills and injections, he explains and has her hustled out.
She goes on these long drives reluctantly, carrying along booze, a martini glass, cigarettes and a gun. Chhoti Rani’s large, droopy eyes and luscious lips ooze unspent sensuality. Saheb and Chhoti Rani were once intimate, but something happened and now he spends his nights in Shikar Badi, with Mahua.
Into this world strolls in Babloo (Randeep Hooda), with a guitar and a backpack. A graduate who had set his eyes on a bank job and a girl, he lost both and landed in a police case. He is here with the help and on the instructions of Gainda Singh. Apart from the obvious threat Babloo carries to the life and limbs of Saheb, we soon figure that he twitches for other things as well.
Relationships develop, there’s deceit, betrayal and heightened excitement and entertainment.

WRITER-DIRECTORTigmanshu Dhulia, who made the brilliant Haasil and not-so-exciting Shagird, has outdone himself with the retelling of the Meena Kumari-starrer Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. He takes Bimal Mitra’s story of a dead marriage in fading aristocracy and spikes it with desperate characters who give the film edge and bite.
Saheb is driven by the need to keep his position, his minions, a wife, a rakhel, and to remain the benevolent patriarch to his world and more. Chhoti Bahu is driven crazy by loneliness and the need for love — physical and emotional. Babloo is driven by ambition. He wants to play Saheb next to a woman totally out of his league.
We spend time with each character and are invested to some degree in all three. These are people made malignant by a life that’s curdled. They’ll die for a little happiness, and kill for a shot at another life.
But our main interest is in the naughty and velvet smooth story that’s told with the coolness, skill and irony of an auteur. Like a delicate crocheted doily, Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster’s story is intricate, enticing and circular. Here what goes around comes around, only harder and quicker than you’d imagine.
Tigmanshu’s direction draws inspiration from noir classics, but its grittiness is his own. His world of fusty royalty is very real, the camera work intimate and adds to the promise of dirty, quick sex and abrupt violence. The dialogue is load-bearing, the music fabulous, and his casting inspired.
Sensuous Mahie Gill has a powerful role. Chhoti Rani is one part Lady Macbeth, one part Chhoti Bahu, but deadlier than the two put together. She shoots straight, makes love in the open while holding a pistol and sits easy in this world of slippery morals. There’s a lots of shooting, smooching and bare backs, and she does it all with the chutzpah we have come to associate with her. When she’s around there hovers the possibility of hysterical, long lovemaking, even in daytime.
That both Jimmy Shergill and Randeep Hooda have great potential has been very obvious from day one, and yet they remain the most underrated actors in Bollywood. Till now. Tigmanshu Dhulia has given them roles they could bite into.
Jimmy Shergill, with his smoking eyes and sharp features, is dashing and has given a simmering performance that will be remembered for a long time. Randeep Hooda is a cheeky actor and plays Babloo with the ease and cunning of a veteran.
The film’s supporting cast is equally talented and does full justice to the attention Dhulia gave to their characters.