The concern is valid. In a civil society that has far more people to stake a claim on such few resources, the idea of a welfare state is bound to become irrelevant sometimes. It’s worth asking in a country that has no social security systems in place, how a common man with meager incomes is supposed to deal with emergencies, when he has no necessary finances to tackle life-threatening tragedies.
As is the case with an automobile factory-floor worker (Dutt) who must pay up Rs 15 lakh for his son’s heart transplant. There’s no way he can amass such wealth overnight to rescue his child. He has a helpless whiner for a wife (Patel). The health insurance that would have fetched him Rs 5 lakh has, but, expired. He is not eligible for such a large loan from his employers. Government-run hospitals are hardly considered options for best treatments.
You only wish the supple subject were delved deeper than making simplistic scapegoats out of politicians wherein a God-man also needs the same heart to save his life and the government of the day.
Bereft of an option within the ’system’, Dutt’s Ravi Rajput, with a German Mauser in his hand, holes up 30 visitors at the private hospital’s lobby/back-entrance/waiting room/wherever. His condition to release the hostages is the transplant surgery that must be performed on his son, free of cost, and at once.
The implausibility of the hostage drama as it gets naively played out is only trumped by the national support for Ravi’s cause. The television debate is curiously in favour of the protagonist’s extreme step, though as a necessary tokenism you are aware he will be punished for his supposed crime. Possibly the only reason you buy the melodramatic leading man’s state, and solution, is the vulnerability and restraint that the towering Dutt exudes in such a sketchily written role. And that may be the only reason you sit through.
Relatively, the film couldn’t have taken much effort to make. For one, it’s almost a subplot-by-subplot, scene-by-scene, unabashed rehash of Nick Cassavetes’s John Q (2002) - a kleptomaniac’s treasure. Secondly, it’s more or less squarely set in a single large room, wherein the filmmaker’s sole intention could be to captivate you with the captive-drama. Unfortunately, the logistics of how the hostage-crisis plods forward; how detainees in different parts of the building can be seen to move in and out of the seized premises; the reaction of the police and the media, remains inexplicably, immensely amateurish.
Hollywood ’adaptations’ has become an accepted norm. It doesn’t seem anymore an object of ridicule or jest. I wish therefore the makers of this movie had instead chosen Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) for their manual during the shoot. Just a suggestion for the next time, people!