Gunda (1998) – Cast, Dialogues, Songs and Why It Became a Cult Film

Gunda is a 1998 Hindi action film directed by Kanti Shah and starring Mithun Chakraborty. It was a small, low-budget release in its year, but over the next two decades it became one of the most talked-about cult films in India, mainly because of its rhyming, over-the-top dialogue. This English guide covers the cast, the famous dialogues, the songs and the “hit or flop” question. 18+ site.

Gunda (1998) at a glance

• Director: Kanti Shah
• Lead: Mithun Chakraborty as Shankar, a coolie who takes on a gangster
• Villain: Mukesh Rishi as Bulla
• Also starring: Shakti Kapoor, Mohan Joshi, Harish Patel, Razak Khan and Deepak Shirke
• Dialogues: Bashir Babar
• Language: Hindi

The story in short

Shankar, a hard-working coolie, crosses paths with the gangster Bulla and his gang, who want to control the city before an election. After Bulla’s men hurt Shankar’s family, the film turns into a revenge story told through fights, songs and long villain speeches.

Why Gunda’s dialogues are famous

Almost every villain introduces himself with a rhyming couplet built around his own name. These lines were written to sound tough, but audiences later found them so extreme that they became meme material. Students and online film groups started holding “Gunda screenings” and reciting lines along with the film, the way Western fans treat The Room. That second life is why people from the UK, the US and the Gulf now search for “Gunda movie dialogues”.

Gunda songs

Like most Kanti Shah films, Gunda has several song-and-dance numbers that break up the action. They are short and low-budget, and they are part of why the film is watched as a period piece of late-1990s single-screen cinema.

Was Gunda a hit or a flop?

At release it was a modest B-circuit film aimed at small-town cinemas, with no big box-office run. Its fame came later, through VCDs, TV reruns and the internet. So: not a box-office hit, but one of the biggest cult successes of Hindi cinema.

Gunda on Lost Actress

The archive has a Hinglish film page, Gunda – film page, which links to Sapna Sappu’s scene list. For the director’s other titles see the Kanti Shah Movies List, and for what “B-grade” means see Indian B-Grade Movies Explained.

Updated 17 Oct 2026.