Release
date:
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May 3,
2019
|
Director:
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Ashwini Chaudhary
|
Cast:
Language:
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Aftab Shivdasani,
Shreyas Talpade, Pavan Raj Malhotra, Jameel Khan, Ishita Dutta, Sonnalli
Seygall, Manu Rishi Chadha, Vijay Raaz, Zeishan Quadri
Hindi
|
“Kaahe labadh-labadh kar raha hai?” sounds
so much more colourful than its English translations “Why are you blabbering?”
or “Why are you talking rubbish?” Siraj Ahmed’s Hindi dialogues, rooted in the
soil of Varanasi, are among the nicer elements in Setters, a film set in the holy city amidst an
unholy bunch of locals running an exam paper leaking racket. Their trade is far
more sophisticated than you might imagine, and gets increasingly high-tech with
each passing day as the police close in on the gang. The remuneration, quite
justifiably, is never less than several lakh rupees per candidate per exam.
Bhaiyyaji (Pavan
Raj Malhotra) is the boss of these criminals and Apurva Choudhury (Shreyas
Talpade) is his smartest lieutenant. Their troubles begin when the Superintendent
of Police Aditya Singh (Aftab Shivdasani) forms a special task force to bust
Bhaiyya’s business.
There is a hint of
a whiff of a suggestion that Apurva was once in love with the woman who is now
Aditya’s wife. These men used to be friends. Now, clearly, they are not.
Director Ashwini
Chaudhary, who earlier made the post-Kargil war-and-family drama Dhoop, is credited as the co-writer of Setters’ story and screenplay along with
Vikash Mani. He has designed his film as a police and crime procedural,
stripping it of all the frills commonly associated with commercial Bollywood
thrillers. And so there are fights but not of the one-man-vanquishes-them-all
variety. There is a romance but the hero and heroine are not assigned a song
and dance break from the overall tension. In fact, Setters has no hero or heroine in the conventional sense.
So far so good, and
up to a point it does appear that Chaudhary has got his tone and pacing
right. Some of the plot twists are interesting. The lengths to which people
will go to ace an exam without studying for it are both fascinating and
amusing. And Bhaiyyaji’s quirks – involving a spittoon and a chappal in
particular – are an unspoken insight into the caste and class heirarchies in
this society.
Yet, Setters never fully takes flight as it
gradually becomes clear that there is only so much the writing has to offer and
nothing further. No doubt several of the methods adopted by the gang are
impressive, but there are as many that are either simplistic or simply not
explained. The code language they use on the phone, for instance, is so easily
deciphered by the police that it brings to mind people who use their birth
dates as ATM PINs. (Spoiler alert)
In one scene one of the ringleaders manages to evade a cop at an airport, but
how exactly he gets her to follow another person instead of him (whether by his
design or her stupidity) is not explained. Elsewhere, in a scene
involving a printing press in Jaipur, one crook gets repeatedly caught trying
to smuggle a paper out of the building but another gets away with it – how
exactly the latter executes his clever idea is not shown, we are just expected
to accept that he did. (Spoiler alert ends)
The writing of all
the characters other than Bhaiyyaji, Apurva and Aditya is also wanting. This is
not about screen time but about depth. If you work with an ensemble cast, some
of them known and respected character artistes, then you had better make their
roles something more than just the labels “the chikankari-worker-turned-hoodlum
played by Vijay Raaz” or “the hot-headed honest Muslim cop” or “the woman cop”.
Yet that is all these people amount to. They add to the numbers in the police
task force and in the criminal gang, but that is about it.
Bollywood has done
far better in this genre in the past with Neeraj Pandey’s Akshay Kumar-Manoj
Bajpayee-starrer Special 26 and more
recently with Raj Kumar Gupta’s Ajay Devgn-Ileana D’cruz-Saurabh Shukla-starrer
Raid. So have India’s other film
industries: the Mollywood film Action
Hero Biju starring Nivin Pauly and Dhuruvangal
Pathinaaru in Tamil come to mind just off the top of my head.
In a different
genre but similar setting – the exam paper leaking ‘industry’ in an Indian town
– this March, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Hindi film Milan Talkies provided a rich socio-political commentary on the
community within which it was set filled with credible, memorable characters.
Setters’ clipped pace is fair enough but its
superficiality becomes apparent early on. A fine example of surface treatment is
the awkward attempt to illustrate that the loyalty of Muslims is automatically
placed under question in our country without any justification. Another is the
inclusion of a woman on Aditya Singh’s squad
– not only is she a mere token presence, with the character being given hardly
any lines beyond “Yes sir”, but the choice of actor is also telling. The slim,
trim, model-like, statuesque Sonnalli Seygall, who you may remember from Pyaar Ka Punchnama, is the only
glamourous individual in the two opposing groups. In a real world where women
are judged more by their looks than their talent and intellect, it is worth
noting that the director was comfortable filling Team Aditya and Team Apurva
with frumpy men but could not bring himself to cast a frumpy woman in place of
Seygall.
There is only one
other woman in the entire film: Bhaiyyaji’s daughter does not get many scenes
but at least she has a mind of her own. More to the point, she is played by
Ishita Dutta who possesses an X factor that
makes her noticeable despite the minuteness of her role.
As a youngster yet
to establish herself, I guess she has far less to complain about than others in
the cast. Why would you take the trouble to rope in Vijay Raaz (Monsoon Wedding, Delhi Belly) and Manu Rishi Chadha (Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Phas Gaye Re Obama) in your film and
then underutilise them? No idea.
Of the actors
playing the three focal characters, one of them far outshines the others.
We know that Pavan
Raj Malhotra is capable of being fabulous, but here as Bhaiyyaji he over-acts
in a number of scenes.
Shivdasani’s career
highlights in the past decade and a half have been gross sexist comedies.
Given one of the few roles of substance in Setters,
he ruins it with his stiff, plodding dialogue delivery and insipidity.
Marathi-Hindi actor
Shreyas Talpade has really been given a raw deal by Hindi cinema through most
of his career despite his fantastic performance in Nagesh Kukunoor’s fantastic
2005 film Iqbal. In recent years he
has been reduced to playing secondary and tertiary roles in the Golmaal slapstick comedy series. He
plays Apurva in Setters with
conviction, and is the best thing about the film.
In terms of concept and cast, Setters has a lot going for it. In
its execution though, it does not quite add up.
Rating (out
of five stars): *3/4
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U (bookmyshow)
|
Running time:
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126 minutes (bookmyshow)
|
This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy:
