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Monday, August 23, 2010
Peepli Live
Director: Anusha Rizvi
Staring: Omkar Das Manikpuri, Raghuvir Yadav, Shalini Vatsa, Farrukh Jaffar, Malaika Shenoy, Vishal Sharma, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sitaram Panchal, Naseeruddin Shah, Aamir Bashir
It appears a scene straight out of an Indian version of Yes Minister. The agricultural minister (Naseeruddin Shah) in the room is one of those suave, telegenic politician faces we’re used to watching endlessly gab on late night news debates. His young colleague, a bureaucrat, is quick to figure the embarrassing enormity of a small situation at hand: it’s the story of one farmer attempting suicide that every news channel has played up across networks. The minister, forced to intervene, asks for that farmer to be passed on an Indira Awas, or a 'Jawahar Rozgar’, or an ‘Annapoorna’…. Naah! Each of those government grants, the IAS officer tells him, concern the homeless, the unemployed, the starving… He says, “Central government schemes don't cover farmers who are still alive. They only cover those dead!” Earlier, when the local MLA had heard of the same story building up into something big, he’d ordered his minions to deliver to the dying man’s house a “Lal Bahadur”. It means in simple English, a tube-well.
Peepli LiveJawahar, Indira, Lal Bahadur, these are of course gift vouchers for India’s political class that counts its personal worth in public patronage, not public service. Everybody rightly loves a good drought. One, obscure Natha, by the way, is that John Doe, non-hero Hiralal, the farmer under fatal debt. His village in fictional Mukhya Pradesh makes for thousands of such across India where life’s cheap; time’s still; air, inescapably dull. It’s the sort of place where people simply live off the motto, ‘I am, where I am’; suitably divide the day between ganja, other idleness, and I guess, the wait for the monsoons. Life reveals itself to them completely, for good, better or worse. The acceptance is complete. Natha’s eyes, already dead, show no signs of curiosity.
The firm test of a film set around the everyman is when you just can’t tell if those before you on screen aren’t the people they’re meant to be. Lovers of Italian neo-realism, for instance, were deeply upset to learn that the cast of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali had actually comprised auditioned performers. Like that dying old woman in Pather Panchali, the dowdy village grandmother in this film almost jolts you up for how ‘unreally’ real she is. I’m absolutely certain you’ve met the numbed Natha before.
His ecstatic brother (Raghuveer Yadav, one of India’s most under-rated actors) tells him: “Na marneka hand-pump, marneka soch! (Hand-pump for staying alive, imagine gifts of death!).” The brothers have reasons to feel lucky. They’re currently under national spotlight. Television only goes where some research or ratings point them to, news merely being a function of the lowest common denominator’s pleasure. Peepli just happens to be a village that falls under a constituency up for a by-election. The opposition would like Natha dead. The government in power would prefer him alive. Both seek mileage from this rare event, while various TV stations and their ambitious reporters break each other’s heads over broken news. The satire is irresistible; the subtext, compelling. And yet neither shows itself up in any form of self-seriousness. The comic writing (Anusha Rizvi) is immaculately inspired.
India’s mass media, whether in the ridiculousness of Hindi television, or even excitable super-stars of English news, leave little scope for parody. The risk involves spoofing a spoof itself. Journalists, and why, their consumers as well, will instantly recognise dark truths in these intended laughs. Sometimes facts are almost as outrageous as limits of fiction. This makes the film then, at once the most intelligent and humorous Indian commentary in long. It is for sure the only true black comedy in Hindi to appear in 27 years. If you’re wondering what happened in 1983, well, two journalists and a Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Peepli’s right up there! I don’t know a better compliment to pay. I think you should certainly pay for a ticket.
It is a miracle that a script like "Peepli Live" has been turned into a movie and has got a commercial release. It is certainly surprising that a mainstream filmmaker like Aamir Khan decided to invest money in a movie that puts the spotlight on grave issues like the plight of Indian peasants. And, of course, kudos to journalist-turned-director Anusha Rizvi for penning down a story that focusses on rural India and its problems at a time when most Bollywood filmmakers are busy luring NRI audiences with mindlesss comedies and designer dramas.
According to a report, 200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997 and it is said that the rise in indebtedness is the root cause of farmer suicide. Anusha's directorial debut follows this theme in "Peepli Live" albeit as a satire. The film also takes a look at how media and politicians use such tragedies to up their TRPs and votebanks respectively. The real issue dies under their rat race.
Set in a small village, the film follows the plight of a farmer's family. Natha (Omkar Das) and Budhiya (Raghuvir Yadav) are brothers who had taken a loan against their land. Their only source of livelihood is put under the hammer when they fail to repay the money. They try to seek the help of a local politician, whose job is to serve the people. But he shoos them away saying the government gives compensation to the families of those farmers who commit suicide. Initially, the brothers ignore the suggestion, but Budiya convinces Natha to sacrifice his life for the sake of the family.
It's election time in the region and a local newspaper owner sends his reporter Rakesh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) who otherwise doesn't want to budge from his comfort zone in search of stories to the village. Rakesh comes to know of Natha's decision to end his life and reports it. The news creates a sensation in the political arena and before it can be brushed under the carpet, somebody gives the lead of the Natha story to Nandita Malik (Malaika Shenoy), an elite English channel journalist. She grabs the opportunity and dashes off to Peepli as the news promises good TRPs.
As soon as her report is flashed comes an avalanche of reporters to the village and there begins a media circus as every journalist vies to sensationalise the issue. Rakesh, who actually filed the story, becomes a mere puppet in the hands of Nandita and when he tries to tell her about another farmer's death, she refuses to report it as she doesn't see it as a TRP booster for her channel.
The irony is that nobody be it reporters or politicians - tries to know why Natha decides to take his life. In fact, no one is interested in solving his problem as they have their own agendas. "Peepli Live" is a satire that shows the reality behind media houses, politicians, bureaucrats and their apathetic approach towards problems. But the script is written in a such a manner that it makes the audience laugh.
India promotes itself as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but the film shows the miserable condition of farmers who continue to end their lives after living in extreme poverty. A report says the highest level of farmer suicides has been reported in Vidarbha, Maharashtra reportedly 4,000 farmer suicides per year. In recent times, farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh have been hogging the limelight as well as in Punjab.
First time director Anusha has not only written a taut script but also executed the story effectively. It seems the film is her attempt to enlighten viewers about the social dilemma that our country is facing and her experience as a journalist is quite visible in her storytelling. The actors from Omkar Das, Raghuvir and Shalini Vatsa as Natha's short tempered wife Dhania to Malaika Shenoy and Vishal Sharma are brilliant too.
If Omkar and Raghuvir bring forth the sufferings of farmers, Shalini, an M. Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, should be applauded for playing the role with such ease and perfection. Malaika and Vishal fit the bill of English and Hindi channel reporters respectively.
New Delhi, Aug 9 (IANS) Already doing the rounds of different international film festivals "Peepli Live", which releases Friday, explores the gap between rural and urban India. The movie has generated the right buzz courtesy its storyline and producer Aamir Khan's promotional expertise. Directed by debutante Anusha Rizvi, it is a satire on farmers' suicides and the subsequent media and political response in the country. The film doesn't boast of any big Bollywood names.
"It is a film on rural and urban divide. People like us who live in cities like Mumbai and Delhi should get to know a little about the realities of India. The film is based on that," Rizvi had told IANS. Added Aamir: "Many things that the film is showing are very crucial and it is similar to my thinking and sensibility."
Distributed by UTV Motion Pictures, this is the fourth film from Aamir Khan Productions Ltd. after "Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India" (2001), "Taare Zameen Par"(2007) and "Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na"(2008). Known to lend his mind, body and soul to his ventures, the Bollywood perfectionist admits he's been losing sleep over the project. "As Aug 13 gets closer, the butterflies in my stomach are really beginning to flutter around. Have lost my appetite and my sleep. I'm really depending on you guys (audiences) this time round for support. This is an especially tough one with no big stars and a film based in a rural background," he wrote on his blog.
Filmed in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and New Delhi, the movie revolves around two impoverished farmers Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) and Budhia (Raghubir Yadav), who live in a village called Peepli. They are about to lose their land due to debts when an incompetent politician suggests they commit suicide to get government help. The news spreads and the media turns Natha into a celebrity.
Noteworthy is that according to government statistics cited in the film, 182,000 farmers took their own lives between 1997 and 2007. Many of the actors in the movie are tribals from the village of Bhadwai in Madhya Pradesh while other cast members are from late playwright Habib Tanvir's theatre troupe Naya Theatre. The film stars Naseeruddin Shah, Malaika Shenoy, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Shalini Vatsa, Farrukh Jaffer, Vishal O. Sharma, Aamir Bashir, Sitaram Panchal and Yugal Kishore.
Also known for his promotional gimmicks, Aamir has taken the movie to different parts of the world through film festivals. It recently won the Best First Feature Film award at the 31st Durban International Film Festival in South Africa.
"Peepli Live" also competed in the Sundance Film Festival, the first film from India to do so. The movie was also picked up by specialty German distribution company Rapid Eye Movies for a special screening at the Berlin International Film Festival. It recently had its Melbourne premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival MIFF 2010 too.
Fusion-rock band Indian Ocean mark their comeback to Bollywood after six years with their compositions "Darte ho" and "Desh mera". Aamir even broke into an impromptu gig with the band during the music launch of "Peepli Live" and took charge of the drums.
Aisha
Director: Rajshree Ojha
Starring: Sonam Kapoor, Abhay Deol, Amrita Puri, Ira Dubey, Cyrus Shahukar, Arunoday Singh
Couples sip on champagne; tinkle and toast to good health; wear sparkling whites (inauspicious colour for Hindus) at weddings of middle-aged pairs. Sunday afternoons are reserved for fancy hats at the races. I’ve never quite socialised in these imagined circles. But then perhaps, the filmmakers know better. Either way, the disclaimer is necessary. Folks in the capital’s New Friends or Defence Colony (make that ‘klony’) pass off for British aristocracy of early 19th century. And somehow it seems the New York based Mira Nair was far more organically rooted to New Delhi’s upper classes, Punjabis, and their boisterous chatter (Monsoon Wedding), than the affected Mumbai filmmakers here.
Since all great literature is behind us, the film borrows from Jane Austen’s novel Emma, in about the same way Gurinder Chadha had unbearably adapted Pride And Prejudice, set in present day Amritsar (Bride And Prejudice). If there’s any consolation, this one’s better put. Sonam Kapoor plays the title role. She heads a sisterhood, a gang of three girls, if you will, who are so luckless, loveless, sexless, they make being single, beyond a certain age, a city disease. The girls are convinced they’ll never find a suitable boy to settle down with. The heroine knows her hero (Abhay Deol, dependable as ever, just wasting his time on this one). Her friends know their mates as well. Each stereotype finds another. Young Aisha plays the unnecessary matchmaker.
Somehow the internal dilemmas true for the village girl Emma in the novel, I’m told, don’t come through for this lead character in the film. This is not a surprise. There are things books can convey that movies needn’t even attempt. The main conflict remains yet the only one possible in urban romances these days: how friends turn lovers eventually (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Naa, I Hate Luv Storys etc). Still, as the camera constantly closes in to capture detailed shots of pencil stilettos, Ferragamo signage at stores, and L'Oreal’s nail polish of obvious shades, I suppose, female ‘aspiration’ – that confused term from marketing – is adequately fulfilled.
Young Delhi boys and girls cart their Honda CRV and Volkswagen Beetle off to go camping, shopping, doping, white water rafting, bumming around with the beach-ball. The atmospherics is complete. The intentions aren’t off the mark. You may like to voyeuristically share a rich experience (with the film’s cast, or crew, in this case). You only wish this sense of outdoor adventure could conceal the blandness of the drama within. And the complete blah for dialogue that get exchanged in flawless Hinglish. The vibes remain cold. Pairs rotate in circles. The same bummers meet over and over again, with little to say, or do. Littler makes sense. Or is even meant to.
You just know it when a film entirely set around a girl – a chick flick, as they say isn’t quite working for you. This is when a guy, an odd comedian Cyrus Sahukar, comes across as by far the most entertaining fellow around. Now he’s funny. For whatever that’s worth. To figure the worth of everything else, check on the price tags at your nearest mall.
Aisha directed by Rajshree Ojha is a light hearted romantic flick targeted at the youth. The film has been produced under the Anil Kapoor Films Company banner and stars Abhay Deol, Sonam Kapoor, Amrita Puri, Ira Dubey, Cyrus Sahukar, Arunoday Singh and Anand Tiwari. Aisha as the title quite obviously suggests is about Aisha (played by Sonam Kapoor), a simple girl who is quite interfering when it comes to relationships of her friends. Arjun (Abhay Deol) always tries to make sure Aisha minds her own business. Pinky, Shefali and Randhir Gambhir are Aisha's friends and she tries to ensure that they do what she feels is best for them. Arjun sarcastically and indirectly gives everyone, including Aisha, the right advice. Will Aisha have it her way or will she realize her mistake before it's too late?
What works for Aisha is the uncomplicated nature of the story line. The film is pretty straight forward and easy to understand. The emotions, although later towards the second half, works. Abhay and Sonam have limited screen space; the film is more about Aisha and her friends than Arjun and her. Hence the scope for chemistry too is limited. The costumes and styling is modern and very appealing. Sonam looks stunning throughout. The music by Amit Trivedi is outstanding.
The film though is very slow paced, the director has little to say - the film survives entirely on dialogues, romantic moments and the actors to carry it through - and feels way too long even though the runtime is just around 125 minutes. Expect quite a few yawns in between. The director to his credit has extracted excellent performances from the entire cast. Starting with Sonam Kapoor who is fabulous in the title role. She expresses very well and carries off those well-designed costumes with grace. Abhay Deol is his natural self in a not-so meaty role. Amrita Puri is a special talent, she's outstanding. Ira Dubey is good. Cyrus Sahukar with a funny name does his part well. Arunoday Singh looks the role. All others are good.
To sum things up, Aisha works to an extent. The slow pace is the films major flaw. Would recommend waiting for the DVD. Sonam Kapoor in a 'tailor'-made role (where more moolah seems to have been spent on tailoring her chic outfits than on exploring the locations, sound sights scents and, yes, sense of this embarrassing world of excessive self-preening) gets the Jane Austen character right. Quite a leap for the actress. When she had played the confused lover-girl in "Saawariya", Sonam had imposed her own natural-born confusions on the character - rendering it shaky and disembodied.
In "Aisha", Sonam is far more in control of her character's misguided emotional compulsions. The fact that the young actress knows this label-centric designer world of chic shenanigans so well, helps Sonam master and contour her character's art of self-deception in a way the original author of the character would have approved. Sonam's world harks back to Jane Austen's giddy-headed British gentry class where match-making was not an idle chatter. It was religion. When placed in the neo-rich spiced-up politically-charged atmosphere of Delhi, Jane Austen's characters seem to come alive in unexpected spurts of sassy splendour and unbridled joie de vivre. You can't help laugh at these young, often-aimless, people's self-importance.
"Aisha" is a two-hour celebration of pre-nuptial rituals. Though no one says it, every girl in the film wants only one thing. And it isn't necessarily love, but somewhere close. The bristle and bustle of Delhi comes alive through the slender intellectual faculties of the protagonists. Let's not forget that Jane Austen had applied great intellectual strength to her frail and shallow people. "Aisha" converts Austen's world into a frail feisty frolicsome fashion fiesta shot with an empowering affection for the natural light that bathes these somewhat affected people. The cinematography by Diego Rodriguez and especially the songs and background music by Amit Trivedi create a multi-hued skyline in this saga of sophomore socialites, their loves, lovers and love tattle.
Debutante director Rajshree Ojha gets into this world of titillating trivia and designer dreams with a wink and smile that goes a long way in building a showcase around these metropolitan mannequins on a single-minded match-making prowl. The casting is as dead-on as it can get. While the guys Abhay Deol, Cyrus Sahukar and Arunoday Singh play the Brain, Nerd and Hunk with absolute relish, it's the girls who keep you chuckling and tch-tch-ing. Neha Dubey and debutante Amrita Puri put in pitch-perfect performances as sahelis bullied into alliances that seem manipulated on earth rather than arranged in heaven. They have a bright future ahead, single or not.
But the film belongs to Sonam Kapoor, make no mistake of that. She makes the best of a rather rare opportunity for an Indian leading lady to be part of a Bollywood film that salutes Victorian mores and Delhi's elitist affectations in one clean cool sweep. Engaging and endearing - Aisha makes you wonder if there's anything more important in the world than finding the right match.
Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai
Director: Milan Luthria
Starring: Ajay Devgn, Emraan Hashmi,Randeep Hooda, Kangna Ranaut, Prachi Desai
Sultan Mirza turns into a bit of a Mirza Ghalib over a few drinks. Or so his girlfriend (Kangna Ranaut) suggests. A woman's deep attraction to powerful men, at its bizarre state, reveals itself in the shape of the ‘gun moll’. The examples are aplenty. The girlfriend here is a ‘70s film actor. Sultan’s the dominant Mafiosi. His life, she tells him, could make for a great film: “You don’t need to act. There’s a new boy Amit. He has eyes just like yours. The scene refers to Amitabh Bachchan of course, and perhaps a story that later became Yash Chopra’s Deewar in ‘75. The actor before you is Ajay Devgn. You tend to agree with the parallel drawn. Few actors in mainstream films manage a self-assured, under-stated swagger, convey so much silently, sometimes just with their glance and droopy eyes. It’s a camera art. Bachchan perfected it as the ‘angry young man’. Devgn, you can tell, is his fine successor.
The film starts off with a disclaimer on his lead character: “He bears absolutely no resemblance to the life of late Mr Haji Mastan.” Another gent in this film (Emraan Hashmi) appears with passion for good things in life, and a moustache that thickly tilts at the edges, hides the smirk within. He’s a young, plumpish, short Shoaib, small-time hustler with a police constable for a father. He runs an electronics shop gifted him by the don Sultan, his father’s acquaintance from work. The neighbourhood seems a crowded Dongri.
Note: “not Haji Mastan”; but no such disclaimer for the secure Dawood Ibrahim. I still don’t know a film that calls attention to its supposed source, with its stated denial alone. It works! A cop who’s just attempted suicide quite lamely narrates for the audience this film’s story: of a dockworker, who migrates at young age to Bombay, and rises rapidly into a world of deceit and infamy. The scenes are but lazily, linearly chapterised.
Laws change. As do definitions. A smuggler of gold, watches or transistors once, would be an importer now. Sultan, the film suggests, became a strange kind of icon among the impatient youth, the sorts of Shoaib. Business leaders, some of them with questionable pasts (or present), are revered similarly these days. Sultan’s position was also unique because he bought peace for the city by dividing its pieces -- Colaba to Tardeo, Bandra to Versova, Dharavi to Dadar… -- among his rivals, Vardhan, Pathan, Vishnu et al: “Why make enemies, when you can make friends out of them.” The law of Omerta was complete. Until the upstart Shoaib shattered the status quo. Sultan himself developed political ambitions.
Ram Gopal Varma’s Company (2002) was supposedly based on the split between Dawood and his second-in-command Chhota Rajan, in the same way this one refers to Haji Mastan and his protégé Dawood’s break-up. Movies, I suspect, bear myth-making qualities beyond literature. The medium is too recent to judge for its place in history. But already, films like Mughal-e-Azam or Sholay appear mythologies to rival epics in public consciousness. So do Mumbai’s underworld dons, though for all you know, their real lives may not be fractionally as exciting as their fictional ones on screen. The subject is immediately exhilarating still. As is this film.
Luthria rightly recreates retro from the ‘70s. And this is not just in the low angles of the shots; strange prints on expensive nylon shirts; or trumpets for a background score. It’s most importantly in the sense of the big screen occasion, and a throwback to smart, terse dialogue. A bit of Salim-Javed then, and a whole lot of early Varma! Both aren't easy to scale. This one's the best effort I’ve seen in long.
Once Upon A Time In Mumbai directed by Milan Luthria is a gangster film starring Ajay Devgan, Emraan Hashmi, Prachi Desai, Kangna Ranaut and Randeep Hooda. The film has been in news for being based on the lives of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and Haji Mastan. The disclaimer - as ordered by the high court - claims otherwise, still the news has created tremendous excitement around the film.
The film is set in Mumbai. It starts off in the 70s with the rise of underworld don Sultan Mirza (Ajay Devgan), with Shoaib (Emraan Hashmi) as his protï. Years later, Sultan decides to leave the crime world and join politics. While on a trip to Delhi for a party ticket, he appoints Shoaib as his successor to the rule the underworld. The ambitious Shoaib takes over and expands his illegal business. Thus begins the conflict between the mentor and his protï. What happens next forms the rest of this genuinely engrossing film.
Once Upon A Time In Mumbai starts of very well. The characters, including those of the two lead gangsters, are very likable. And unlike most other gangster films, the director has included plenty of heart-warming romantic scenes to keep the female section of the audience hooked. Milan Luthria aided big time by Rajat Arora's fabulously written script, delivers inarguably his best work to date. Whether it's the romantic scenes, the action sequences, recreating the retro look of the 70s (along with art director Nitin Desai) or the confrontation between the two lead actors, Milan has handled it all very well. The film also has plenty of mass-appeal, it isn't too serious or depressing nor is there an excess of bloody and gore. The action scenes by Abbas Ali Moghul are expertly choreographed and performed. The background music (Sandeep Shirodhkar) is brilliant. What also take the film to an all new level are those powerful dialogues by Rajat Arora.
The music by Pritam is one of the best so far this year. 'Pee Loon' is a chartbuster and goes well with the film. Ajay Devgan delivers one of his best performances ever. Perfectly cast as Sultan Mirza, Devgan gets everything right. An award deserving performance, undoubtedly. Emraan Hashmi does very well too, sharing great chemistry with the very effective and cute Prachi Desai. Kangana Ranaut is brilliant, yet again. Randeep Hooda is excellent. In fact, every performance is top notch - a pat on Milan's back for extraction fabulous performances from his talented cast.
It's the way he looks at the camera. Almost as if it doesn't exist. Ajay Devgn as Sultan Mirza is NOT Haji Mastan, please note. He's just this Robin Hood in the 1970s who happened to be a smuggler and who at some point in the taut plot, locks horns with a junior recruit who, please note, is NOT Dawood Ibrahim. So who, in the name of immoral crime and haphazard policing, are these two men? So stylishly masculine, so sweaty in their realism and so menacing in their demeanour and complete denial of the existent morality they remind you of the anti-social heroes from Sam Peckinpah's Westerns?
"Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai" takes us back to the beginnings of gangsterism in Mumbai. Milan Luthria excels in creating smouldering combustive stress between two mean menacing men… Remember Devgn (who back then was Devgan, just as Mumbai was Bombay when the film under review unfolds) and Saif Ali Khan in Luthria's "Kachche Dhaage" and on a more satirical note, John Abraham and Nana Patekar in "Taxi No 9211".
In "Once Upon A Time…." the conflict between Devgn (who is NOT Haji Mastan) and Emraan Hashmi (who is NOT Dawood) is placed in a far more complex and challenging scenario. The screenplay (Rajat Arora) takes into view the entire gamut of grime in the canvas of crime that cannot be hidden by the surface glamour and glitter.
The vintage cars, the costumes and that attitude of rebellious abandon comes through in the inner and outer styling of the characters. The people in Luthria's panoramic view of Mumbai in the late 1960s and 70s are steeped in a cinematic realism. Neither a part of that period nor a completely true representation of an era gone-bye-bye the characters hover in a no-man's-land populated by fascinating details of past recreated with a tongue-in-cheek broadness of purpose. There are bouts of suppressed satire in the way the whole era of the genesis of the underworld is represented. For example Emraan Hashmi befriends and sleeps with a woman who looks a lot like a Bollywood actress whom Raj Kapoor had introduced in a film and Dawood had befriended and allegedly impregnated.
Often the characters are an amalgamation of furious folklore and long-forgotten newspaper headlines of the 1970s. Kangna Ranaut plays an actress from the 1970s who gets the hots for the Robin Hood-styled smuggler-hero. Later she is discovered to have a congenital heart disease (a la Madhubala who came two decades before the events of this film are supposed to unfold). But look at the irony! It's her smuggler-hero lover who dies of a wounded heart.Maybe we shouldn't give away the plot. Because the plot never gives itself away. It never betrays a phoney intent of purpose. The narrative unfolds through the first-person narration of a troubled wounded cop, played with remarkably restrained bravado by Randeep Hooda. Indeed this is the most accomplished performance in the film. He's partly a gallant law enforcer and partly a victim of a system that breeds inequality, corruption and finally, self-destruction.
Hooda is wry, cynical, bitter, anguished and yet able to see the humour of a situation that one can ride only by sublimating its gravity. As for Ajay Devgn, he continues to evolve with every performance. As a gangster from the 1970s Devgan brings on the table a clenched self-mocking immorality. He stands outside the character even while internalizing the performance.
Director Milan Luthria imparts a keen eye for details to the storytelling. Some bits in the second-half get shaky, such as the predicable club songs and the repeated use of overlapping editing patterns to convey the rising tension between the mentor and the protégé turned tormenter. But the director's command over the language of outlawry is unquestionable. Emran Hashmi as Devgn's uncontrollable protégée gets the look and body language right. His courtship of Prachi Desai to the accompaniment of romantic hits from the 1970s (e.g Raj Kapoor's "Bobby") is engaging.
Understandably, the two ladies are reduced to pursing their lips and wringing their hands as the story progresses. The film's best, most charming and heartwarming moments come in the early stages of the drama between Devgn and Ranaut. Their growing fondness for one another is recorded in scenes and words written by a poet who can see the humour behind mutual attractions. The real hero of this film is the writing. Rajat Arora's dialogues flow from the storytelling in a smooth flow of poetry and street wisdom. Aseem Mishra's sharply -evocative cinematography gives to this rugged-and-razorsharp look at Mumbai's mythic mating with crime, an urgency that simply can't be ignored.
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