UDTA PUNJAB aka’High Punjab’, is a story with Punjab in background, and with drugs in foreground. This could be any place, in India or away, but drugs is sh*t, so message is clear. STOP DRUGS!. Here’s my review of Anurag Kashyap’s "a-made-into-controversial" movie UDTA PUNJAB.
SPOILER ALERT. There’s a popstar Tommy Singh(Shahid Kapoor) who is also a drug addict, and is also a youth icon for Punjab youth, he made songs glorifying drugs, and his followers are more enticed towards this sh*t. There’s a biharin field-dweller(Alia Bhatt), who had big dreams, but now she’s entangled with drug mafiosi in Punjab. There’s a doctor Preet Sahni(Kareena Kapoor) who wanted to free punjabi youths from this drug addiction, and then there’s a SI Sartaj Singh(Diljit Dosanjh), who knew the corrupt system, and also being a part of it, still wants to change it, but just needed a push. How their lives got entangled, and with the message of truth of the drug problem, is what the crux of this movie.
This movie got some story, the best part is the screenplay(Sudip Sharma, Abhishek Chaubey), how they arranged four different tracks in the movie, and how they intermingled, with a common aim of eradicating the drug menace. Background score perfectly suits the movie, with the top-notch direction from Abhishek Chaubey(movie produced by f se phantom production aka Anurag Kashyap & Balaji Telefilms), the one who gave us Ishqiya. He maintained the same style here as well. The movie starts on a high note, with the title song thrown in, "Chitta Ve", however the movie didnt slipped from there, instead it rose high and high. Though 2nd half is a bit slack than the 1st one, but nonetheless, you got so much interested with the characters and their happening, that you want to watch more of it. This movie goes on for more than 2.5 hours. All the characters are given ample screen space to show their skills, characterization is top notch.
Acting needs a separate paragraph, so there it is. SHAHID KAPOOR is brilliant, take a bow, you’ve done so well as the popstar, I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing this character. Alia Bhatt shows that this is what she’s capable of, even without glamour, she’s one to look out for, brilliant. And punjabi singer-actor Diljit Dosanjh, he’s awesome in this movie, I haven’t watched any of his movie, but this one is a watch-out for. However Kareena was doing whatever she was supposed to, but here screen space was less, with less scope of variety in acting, though her being a very important role in the story. Even the remaining actors did brilliant in their respective roles, be it Satish Kaushik, Prabhjyot Singh or Harpreet Singh. Ending of movie is okayish, and could somehow be different, but well, its Anurag or Abhishek’s style(inspired by Tarntino, well Tarntino fans can guess the ending now), so its acceptable to me.
I will say that this is a NOT-TO-BE-MISSED movie, so please go, and watch it in theater, so that you can not only enjoy the movie, but you can see the ghost i.e. the drugs. ITS BAD. I will rate the movie a 4.5/5. And oh! BTW, a lot of expletives are used in the movie, that’s why its A, isn’t it?
GRuchirG.
O Chitta Vey! Kaiyan nu hai khush kitta vey!