Release date:
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February 24, 2017
|
Director:
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Vishal Bhardwaj
|
Cast:
Language:
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Kangana Ranaut,
Saif Ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Richard McCabe, Shriswara Dubey, Gajraj Rao, Saharsh
Shukla, Kashmira Irani
Hindi
|
Bloody hell!
She rides a horse across a stage
near the India-Burma (Myanmar) border, blindfolds herself to throw knives at
targets several feet away, bashes up bad guys, mud wrestles with a muscular
soldier and runs swiftly atop a moving train.
The point is not that Kangana
Ranaut merely manages to do all this in a film. The point is, she is convincing
while executing challenging stunts, and looks good while doing them. So, allow
me to borrow her character’s signature line in Rangoon: Bloody hell!
Ranaut is a queen. If there is
one takeaway from Vishal Bhardwaj’s Rangoon,
it is this: that there is something terribly foolish about a film industry which
fails to fully tap the vast reserves of female talent at its disposal, and does
not centre more action films around this lovely actress… or Priyanka Chopra… or
Deepika Padukone… or Anushka Sharma… or any of their other feisty, fleet-footed
women colleagues.
When Rangoon has the heroine displaying her physical prowess, it is on
solid ground. It falters in other areas, but for the pleasure of seeing a fiery
woman skillfully performing feats that have for too long been available only to
the men of Hindi cinema, it is worth a watch.
Bhardwaj’s latest takes us back
to 1940s India, where an action star screen-named Miss Julia (Ranaut) rules
Bombay cinema. Her professional mentor and producer, Rusi Billimoria (Saif Ali
Khan), is a married man who treats her like he would his pet poodle, a pretty
creature to be patronised, pampered and protected, loved in the way he thinks
love is meant to be given to a woman, but not respected.
We meet these two against the
backdrop of multiple wars. Within India, Mahatma Gandhi and like-minded freedom
fighters are trying to rid the country of its British colonisers with the
weapon of ahimsa. Elsewhere, Netaji Subhash
Chandra Bose is building his Azad Hind Fauj. A battle is on between these two
ideologies to capture the imagination of the people.
Meanwhile, Billimoria becomes beholden
to the British for business reasons. Circumstances force Miss Julia to travel
to the Indo-Myanmar border where she must headline a series of shows designed to
raise the spirits of the ‘British’ troops stationed there. This is where she
meets Jamadar Nawab Malik (Shahid Kapoor), an Indian like so many others
serving in the British army, and employed to keep his own people down.
These then are the two triangles around which Rangoon revolves: Julia, Rusi and Nawab; India, Gandhi and Bose.
On the face of it, this is a
setting bubbling with possibilities, and considerable swathes of Rangoon (especially in its second half)
do mine that potential. Ranaut delivers a seemingly effortless, chameleon-like
performance as a woman who is by turns fragile and fierce, hurting yet
invulnerable, a child who grows into a woman during the course of the film. The
actress and the character she plays here, possess a body that is as intriguing
as her mind: she appears delicate, yet explodes with energy and athleticism when
life demands it of her.
Thankfully, Rusi is not the
suave, likeable, easygoing flirt Khan has played in too many films now. He is
an amoral yet charming creature, a man of grays and internal conflicts that
appear to surprise him as he discovers them. Khan is as assured here as he has
been in his best work so far (read: Hum
Tum, Ek Hasina Thi and Omkara), making Rusi hard to like yet
impossible to hate in a way that only he can. Rangoon is a sorely needed reminder that this Khan is one of the
finest actors among all the heroes in Hindi cinema right now, the one whose
versatility has been least explored.
However, for the film to be
compelling all the way, it needed us to root for Julia and Nawab, not Julia and
Rusi, but the chemistry between Ranaut and Kapoor is strangely lukewarm. And
Kapoor deadpans his way through the role, which is inexplicable considering
that he is emerging here from a career best performance in Haider (2014) helmed by the same director.
Chemistry is not a factor of good
acting alone, it emerges from great writing. Therein lies the problem with Rangoon. Unlike the immersive writing of
Haider, Rangoon seems detached from its proceedings, narrating them like an
observer rather than a participant.
The story of Rangoon is credited to Matthew Robbins who earlier wrote 2011’s Saat Khoon Maaf, which Bhardwaj directed. The screenplay has been jointly written
by Robbins, Sabrina Dhawan (who wrote Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding) and Bhardwaj himself. Perhaps Bhardwaj should have
known better than to team up once again with Robbins, considering that despite
all the atmospherics and intrigue he managed to summon up in Saat Khoon Maaf, that too ended up feeling
like an outsider’s view of the world it sought to create.
This is one reason why Rangoon does not come alive on screen.
The film also takes too long to lift off. The best of Rangoon is packed into its second half, but it is once again pulled
down by an overly dramatised, ham-fisted ending that is trying too hard to be
emotionally wrenching in its nationalist fervour and imposing, but ends up
being amusingly trite instead.
That said, the positives of Rangoon call out. Pankaj Kumar’s
cinematography is imaginative and grand, and despite the occasional weak spot
in the special effects, the film looks rich. Dolly Ahluwalia’s costumes, the
hairdos and styling are all exemplary. The combination of Ranaut’s verve, the
retro choreography by Farah Khan and Sudesh Adhana, well-written songs blending
perfectly into the narrative and lavish set pieces, make Rangoon’s many song-and-dance numbers memorable.
The music is by Bhardwaj, the
lyrics by Gulzar. Now that’s a team
worth repeating. They roll out an entire spectrum of moods for Rangoon, ranging from the ruminative
romantic ballad Yeh ishq hai to the
frothy mischief of Mere miya gaye England.
When the same film gives you Arijit Singh singing “Sufi ke zulfe ki / Lau utthi
Allah hu / Jalte hi rehna hai / Baaki na main na tu” and “Mere miya gaye England / Baja ke band / Na jaane kaha karenge land / Ki
Hitler chauke na”, in Rekha Bhardwaj’s voice, you almost will it to extend
that quality into every other department.
If only.
Early news about Rangoon indicated that it was based on
the true story of Fearless Nadia, the Australia-born actress who lived from 1908-1996
and ruled the Hindi film industry as an action star in her time. As is often
the case with such Bollywood ventures, the rumours (very likely initiated by
the film’s own team to generate a buzz around the project) have given way to an
officially stated position that Rangoon has nothing to do with Nadia.
The truth is, Julia is probably
inspired by Nadia, but this is not a biopic. This is a love triangle set in a
time when the people of India were grappling with the opposing ideologies of
the Mahatma and Netaji. The Bhardwaj who made Maqbool, Omkara and Haider is a man perfectly suited to a
film like Rangoon. Sadly, without the
writing brilliance of the director’s Shakespeare trilogy, Rangoon gets many things right, but fails to come together as an
involving, engaging whole.
Still, Ranaut is remarkable playing
the sort of character no Hindi film leading lady has been given for decades
now. A big bow to Bhardwaj for that, and to the actress for choosing a path
advocated by Gandhi, being the change she clearly wants to see in Hindi cinema.
This action queen deserved a more vibrant film though.
Rating
(out of five stars): **1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
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167 minutes 25 seconds
|
This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/RangoonTheFilm/
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