No article on this film is complete without Randeep Hooda, who played the honest cop, Agnel Wilson. In a film of grey characters, Hooda brought a tragic black-and-white hero. His screen time is just 12 minutes, but his final confrontation with Devgn— "Main tumse chhoti gundi nahi, bade aadmi ki tarah baat kar raha hoon" (I’m not a small crook talking to you, I’m a big man)—is the film’s moral compass. Hooda spent a week living in a real Mumbai police chowky to learn the casual swagger of a 70s officer.
And that, dear reader, is the real once-upon-a-time. once upon a time in mumbai actors
Hashmi studied clips of Robert De Niro in The Untouchables and real footage of Dawood Ibrahim. He added a unique tic: Shoaib constantly smooths his hair back, as if physically pushing away any sentimentality. The result? By the climax, you forget you’re watching the guy from Murder —you’re just terrified of Shoaib. No article on this film is complete without
When Milan Luthria’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai released in 2010, Bollywood was saturated with gangster films that glorified violence with stylized, jittery editing. However, this film took a different route. It was a throwback to the 1970s—a time when power was exercised not just with the pull of a trigger, but with the delivery of a soul-shaking monologue. Hooda spent a week living in a real
If Devgn is the iceberg, Emraan Hashmi’s Shoaib Khan (based on Dawood Ibrahim) is a wildfire. Shoaib starts as a loyal protégé and morphs into a hungry, slick-haired beast who wants to own Bombay.