I am a big fan of director Tigmanshu Dhulia since his first movie “Haasil” the movie which placed Irfan Khan on the map of Bollywood. However this time he comes with another wonderful actor Nana Patekar. The director has a certain style of film making, stories with heavy doses of politics and violence. This movie is also special because it features famous director “Anurag Kashyap” in a prominent role.
Nana Patekar as ‘Hanumant Singh’ plays an ‘old song loving’ and ‘corrupt as a politician’ cop, who carries out all the dirty works for a minister named ‘Rajmani Singh’ (Zakir Hussain) without any questions of morality or dignity, enters Mohit Alawat a quite subordinate who does not wants to be the part of corruption, but nobody is asking for his opinion anyway. Then there is a famous criminal Bunty Bhaiya (Anurag Kashyap) who has been caught by police recently. In a plot to release two terrorist and Bunty Bhaiya alongside three journalists are kidnapped including Rimi Sen, the love interest of Mohit Alawat. What follows is story where all the characters are entangled in a tale of conflict, deception, blood and betrayal.
The story is gripping, with a lot of twists and turns, some even unexpected. However a better editor could have done wonders with the final cut, the movie becomes lengthy after a while. But taking nothing out from the director, there are a lot of praiseworthy sequences and a lot of good dialogues.
Nana Patekar is just fabulous, a ‘10/10’ performance. Mohit Alawat shows good temperament; Anurag Kashyap does his role with relative ease and Zakir Hussain excels in his role as well. Rimi sen is just ok, no fireworks there, even i feel, her role could have been spared, i.e. to say, her character is kind of forced on the story, and few sequences between Rimi and Mohit actually drags the narrative.
Overall the movie is a nice watch, however the climax is kind of a letdown, still a better movie than a lot of stuff available now a days. A fan of Nana Patekar should not miss this one.
Rating ***.
I think the movie lacked soul. Scenes with Mohit's friends were laughably poor. He did not seem to be a typical sub-inspector. The first half was lacklustre except Nana Patekar.
ReplyDeleteAbout the casting..Nana is a convincing Marathi or south Indian cop but seeing him playing Hanumant Singh.. a typical North Indian cop was a bit indigestible. Someone like Pankaj Malhotra would have been more appropriate.
There was this emptiness that I felt through most of the film. Nana and Anuraag were the only saving graces of the film.