1/2
It is ok to roast and beat up people to pulp with irons rods these days or so it appears. It seems to be what gets the eyeballs. So one should not grudge sturdy iron bars that go crunch crunch on all bones in sight. If you thought Badlapur was violently gross wait till you see this one. And the sad part is this violence is for real. It is the case of art imitating life. Coincidentally or otherwise the premise of these stories always end in up some towns north of the country, close to the capital. Is the movie industry not so subtly trying to give a message? Or is it because the instances of rustic raw criminality there are so numerous that it cannot be missed. Ordinary people exhibit courage in scenarios gut wrenching enough to make the most strong hearted go weak in the legs.
The director in a tearing hurry to set the premise, packs the first few minutes with many aspects of the urban working woman, some relevant and some not so, to the latter part of the movie. Like the central female character is an advertising professional in a corporate company who smokes has had a cross cultural love marriage established purely by cooing sexily in a south Indian language, is confident, mischievous, raring to go and explore the country side with gay abandon and of course loves to initiate intimacy with her partner. All this is put together so breathlessly, that perhaps the director was worried that we might misconstrue the victim who is also the main protagonist as an ordinary submissive wife and actually derives her strength from smoking and being of liberal values. Really?
While you are gasping and wondering about the opening shot that has a minor parallel story of hooligans scaring her while driving on the streets of Delhi and she attempts in vain to book a case and instead is given a fatherly sermon of how she should perhaps avoid venturing out at late night.( You naughty Delhi lawyers look what you started now)
The director is restless by now and decides that it is time to drop the unsuspecting audience right into the middle of a rustic rural setting alongside a bypass of the main highway in question. To be fair this story there on jerks you up and gets you all agog with admiration for the cinematic-ally natural brilliance with which it is handled and setting the the tone for the rest of the movie where urban male egoes clash against an equally explosive rural male ego. The couple out on a holiday and stopping by at the roadside hotel are sucked into the middle of a tragic honor killing. A honourable intervention driven by need to pander to ones ego goes wrong and takes the holidaying couple on a chase filled with bloodbath and bones crunching all around before ending in a climax straight out of Nana Patekar’s Prahaar.
There is a slightly weak and not fully fleshed out story of honor killings in the north of India and subtly suggests that there is no democracy beyond the frontiers of Delhi ‘s Gurgaon which it appears is a fully self governed violent world of its own. Aunty Leslee must be rubbing her hands in glee over this submission. But India’s own daughter Anushka decides to take things in her own hand and hopefully gets some semblance of a justice.
How she does it does makes you want to applaud the very tight and slick direction from the director Navdeep Singh. While there is nothing startingly new about the tale that one has maybe heard on the news channels every other day, there is a taut narration coupled with action that the director uses to hold your attention. You may want to uncheck that strong grip you have on the theatre’s armrests when going get tough and orthopedists are badly required.
No one can take away the fact that Anushka puts her life into this role as a producer and more as an actor and is given able support by her supportive movie hubby Neil and a scary performance by Darshan of Mary Kom fame who I felt was not fully exploited.
There are spurts of extremely admirable detailing( watch the scene where they chase the offenders for the first time or when the female protagonist hurls abuses at her enemies in frustration while throwing stones at them, erasing abuses on the walls of a public toilet or simple horror drawn up by a villager leaning against a car window) and else where the director seems to be in a tearing hurry and is probably in a mode of ‘let’s get on with it and finish it’. This is obviously a director to watch out for.
Obviously the recall value is maximum with the grating iron rod that reverberates through the theatre. The cast performance is of top order from most of the main cast. The plot is smart but too thrifty on creativity
I can only applaud week after week as new directors emerge on the scene to take us far away from the world of murky B graders. The movie is topical and almost felt like a silent answer to the documentary. We know how to handle it when things go wrong. India’s daughter can give it back guns, a noisy iron rod, ciggie punches et al