Johnny Gaddaar

Johnny the Traitor) is a 2007 Indian Hindi-language neo-noir crime thriller film written and directed by Sriram Raghavan, produced under the banner Adlabs.

It stars Neil Nitin Mukesh, in his film debut, alongside Dharmendra, Zakir Hussain, Rimi Sen, Vinay Pathak, Govind Namdeo, Dayanand Shetty and Ashwini Kalsekar.

[7] In 2018, Raghavan confessed to having read the novel while he was working at ISRO on public safety announcement films.

[8] The film starts on a rainy night with a conversation between four cops in a police van, patrolling the streets of Mumbai.

A man in a jacket gets out of the car, heads towards the garage, and opens the roller shutter door when he is shot from behind multiple times.

When one of Seshadri's police contacts from Bengaluru, Kalyan, informs him on the phone about "French furniture" (code word for drugs) worth Rs.

Vikram, who is dating Shardul's wife Mini and desperately wants to emigrate to Canada with her, plans to steal the money from Shiva in the train by using chloroform to make him unconscious.

Now Sheshadri, Kalyan, Prakash, and Shardul, one-by-one, find out Vikram's truth and are killed by him in cold blood.

[9] The opening credits dedicate the film to the Indian director Vijay Anand and writer James Hadley Chase.

While the story is not based on any of James Hadley Chase's novels, it does follow a similar plot line.

[11] But the main game is that Raghavan's inspiration for the plot and characterization was not Vijay Anand's film Johny Mera Naam.

[12] The film has fifteen songs and two remixes composed by Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy (soundtrack) and Daniel B George (score), with lyrics by Jaideep Sahni.

As they were discussing, Ehsaan came up with a riff which Sriram felt fits the theme of the movie, which then turned out to be the title song "Johnny Gaddaar".

This is the soundtrack that breaks all the rules, the three buddies reveling in the recklessness director Sriram Raghavan gives them.

[16] The soundtrack featured in the "Top 10 music Albums of the year" list by Rediff, which said Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy get it right again with twisted, unorthodox productions like Johnny Gaddaar.

SEL, Dharmendra, Sriram Raghavan at the music launch