Truth) is a 1998 Indian Hindi-language crime film, produced and directed by Ram Gopal Varma; written by Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap.

It stars J. D. Chakravarthy, Urmila Matondkar and Manoj Bajpayee, alongside Saurabh Shukla, Aditya Shrivastava and Paresh Rawal.

[2] Satya was released on 3 July 1998 with widespread critical acclaim, particularly for its realistic depiction of the Indian underworld and Bajpayee's performance.

It was also commercially successful, grossing ₹15 crore (US$1.7 million), and helped launch a number of careers (especially for Kashyap and Bajpayee).

Malhotra, a builder whom Kallu Mama extorted, asks them to meet him for the money and Mhatre, Satya and the gang are ambushed.

Mhatre and his gang are ready to kill him but are forced to abandon their plan on orders from politician Bhau Thakurdas Jhawle.

Director Ram Gopal Varma, fascinated with Mumbai, wanted to return to making action films after a long break.

[5] Music producer and singer Gulshan Kumar was shot dead outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev temple in Mumbai on 12 August 1997.

"[4] He then decided to make a film about gangsters and, as an Ayn Rand fan, wanted to "put Howard Roark in the underworld".

[10] Varma, impressed by his performance in Bandit Queen, said that he wanted to give him a bigger role and advised him not to do Daud.

[7] They went to Varma's farmhouse in Hyderabad and wrote the first draft in a week without doing research, since Kashyap felt that a gangster's psychology is "very similar to anybody else".

[15][16] Bajpayee had never met any gangster in his life and was not good in speaking Marathi language, although he was playing a Maharashtrian character.

[7] He based the character of Bhiku Mhatre on a person from his hometown who was a Jeetendra fan, wore coloured T-shirts and was short-tempered; he took the accent from his cook who was from Kolhapur.

[15] Although the female lead was initially offered to Manisha Koirala, but later replaced by Urmila Matondkar, with whom he had worked in Rangeela and Daud.

[26] Satya's climactic scene was filmed during Ganesh Chaturthi, when the team recreated the Juhu beach with about 500 junior artists.

Sandeep Chowta composed the background score, which was released on the Venus Worldwide Entertainment label on 3 July 1998.

[32][33] The singers were Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Suresh Wadkar, Mano, Hariharan and Bhupinder Singh.

[34] The film targeted an urban audience,[34] and dubbed Telugu and Tamil-language versions were released in their regional markets.

[40] Several cast and crew members attended the film's premiere at the Eros Cinema, where it received a good audience response.

It perfectly captured the savagery of what has become our daily reality while also uncovering the final futility and pathos of mind-less gang wars.

"[45] In his review, Khalid Mohammed wrote: "Satya is a gritty, hellishly exciting film which stings and screams.

"[46] According to Anupama Chopra, "The maverick director ... has broken all Bollywood rules this time... Satya is an exercise in integrated aesthetics.

Jai Arjun Singh wrote, "Ram Gopal Varma shattered movie tastes with it, inventing a new language", and he called it his "favourite Indian gangster film".

[34][51] Satya earned ₹24 lakh (US$28,000) on fifteen screens in one week in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh,[52] and the film benefited from the government of Maharashtra's entertainment tax exemption.

[59] In her book Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, Ranjani Mazumdar wrote that Satya's Mumbai resembles a "documentary montage of claustrophobic spaces" with "documentary-styled visuals".

In his book, Lunch with a Bigot, Amitava Kumar wrote that Satya's language of abuse "erupts more than the guns exploding".

[60] The authors of Locating Cultural Change: Theory, Method, Process compared the characters of Amod Shukla and Khandilkar to former Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria.

[61] Varma used Sudhir Mishra's 1996 film, Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, as a reference point for Satya.

[77] British director Danny Boyle cited Satya as an inspiration for his 2008 Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

Company, starring Mohanlal, Manisha Koirala, Vivek Oberoi and Ajay Devgn, was loosely based on Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company and received positive reviews.