REVIEW 697: INDIA’S MOST WANTED

Release date:	May 24, 2019
Director:	Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast: Language:	Arjun Kapoor, Praveen Singh Sisodia, Prasanth Alexander, Bajrang Bali Singh, Aasif Khan, Devendra Mishra, Jitendra Shastri, Sudev Nair  Hindi

Do you sometimes sit in a movie hall and sense that what is unfolding on screen began with an interesting concept that somehow choked at the execution stage? India’s Most Wanted is that kind of film.

Indian intelligence officials and globe-trotting espionage agents have in recent years become a Bollywood fixation, but from the Saif Ali Khan-Kareena Kapoor-starrer Agent Vinod in 2012, to Baby (2015) with Akshay Kumar in the lead, and last year’s Aiyaary headlined by Manoj Bajpayee and Sidharth Malhotra, these films have tended to kick off with a promising premise and then struggle to be anything much beyond that. India’s Most Wanted (IMW) goes down the same path.

Prabhat (Arjun Kapoor), IMW’s central character, is a stubborn fellow who has a mind of his own independent of his well-intentioned immediate superior Ravi Raj (Rajesh Sharma) and the intelligence agency for which he works. As the film opens, India is being rocked by bomb blasts engineered by shadowy figures believed to be in Pakistan and Dubai. A source gives Prabhat a lead about the mastermind behind these explosions, which indicates that the man is, in fact, in Nepal. Higher-ups in Delhi are not convinced, but Prabhat decides to head off to Nepal anyway with a motley crew of colleagues, all of them conducting the operation at their own expense. Bossman Ravi Raj gives them his blessings but not his on-the-record assent.

Honest, efficient government servants defying their senior’s orders in their frustration with sarkari red tape and obduracy, and ending up in a clash with Pakistan’s ISI in a third country while hot on the heels of a brutal terrorist, that too purportedly based on a true story – this is the stuff that dreams are made of, this is thriller heaven. With such ingredients at hand, IMW should have been an exciting suspense saga. Yet from the starting block the film struggles to get into the groove, despite assembling an interesting cast who look convincing as real people rather than actors to play Prabhat’s team of rogue agents.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in the screenplay. Firstly, it took me a while – too long a while – to wrap my head around the chain of individuals that had got information to Prabhat and why. Some amount of confusion, especially initially, is not unusual in films of this variety, but they usually offer compensation in the form of an accelerated pace or breathtaking action or, in the case of directors opting for a quiet tone, an under-stated sense of urgency that taps the audience’s own instinctive assumptions about the drama and danger intrinsic to such situations in real life although they are alien to ordinary folk like us. Not here.

IMW aims at being an intelligence agency procedural rather than a Mission Impossible / James Bond enterprise, which is fine in theory since writer-director-producer Raj Kumar Gupta demonstrated his natural affinity for the genre in the excellent Ajay Devgn-starrer Raid (2018) set in the world of income-tax officials. IMW, however, simply does not lift off.

Even after the initial cobwebs are cleared, the narrative remains fuzzy. The primary informant’s motivations are never convincing, Prabhat & Co find their prey with what seems like considerable ease, the actions of their Nepalese counterparts are inexplicable, and the ISI comes across as a sluggish lot.

That last point – the absence of a powerful antagonist – is the final nail in the coffin. Before it is hammered in, the film has already been betrayed by its own seeming lack of faith in the tenor it has set for itself. In life-and-death scenarios towards the end, for instance, precious seconds and minutes are spent just staring down opponents in conventional Hindi filmi style. And the voiceover by the lead terrorist at regular intervals is ineffective.

To be fair to IMW, neither the Indian agents nor the ISI are downright dumbos, unlike the desis and their enemy targets in Baby.

What IMW does have going for it are Arjun Kapoor’s earnestness, the credibility of the supporting cast especially the inimitable Rajesh Sharma, the non-judgmental tone adopted towards Sharma’s Ravi Raj although he is not willing to stick his neck out as Prabhat does, the warm equation between him and Prabhat, and the realness of the settings. Nepal looks gorgeous, but cinematographer Dudley cleverly uses the visuals not so much to impress us with their prettiness as to conjure up an ominous atmosphere.

Most important, although the terrorist being hunted down by Prabhat is a Muslim, his religious identity is not over-emphasised to crudely cash in on the Islamophobia prevailing worldwide in the way Bollywood films like Padmaavat and Kesari have done since 2017-18 – he is what he is, that is a fact, nothing more, nothing less. His ISI backers too are not stereotypically portrayed as demonic or fumbling cartoons – they may be sluggish, as mentioned earlier, but they are not foolish. And thankfully Prabhat’s Muslim colleague is treated as a regular person, not a contrivance planted in the screenplay to be condescendingly positioned as redemption for the Muslim community – the fact that he happens to be Muslim struck me rather late in the film because a big deal is not made of it. Despite its inevitable allusions to patriotism, inevitable considering the overall theme, India’s Most Wanted also does not resort to the kind of loud, chest-thumping nationalism that is all the rage in Bollywood and the public discourse these days.

At a time when many Bollywood stalwarts are revealing themselves to be either opportunists or bigots, Raj Kumar Gupta deserves high praise for this aspect of his writing and direction, especially since such opportunism has yielded solid box-office dividends in the past year. Sadly, his decency alone cannot hold up a film. Barring occasional suspenseful passages, India’s Most Wanted does not live up to the expectations it raises in its opening scenes. It lacks the punch, pizzazz and substance to ensure that its Shah Rukh Khan reference hits home.

Well, I guess the director who has already given us No One Killed Jessica, Raid and the lesser known but equally commendable Aamir is allowed an off day. Waiting for your next film, Mr Gupta.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	125 minutes 26 seconds

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/indias-most-wanted-movie-review-arjun-kapoors-earnestness-has-more-weight-than-this-screenplay-6695281.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/foxstarhindi/

REVIEW 579: RAID

Release date:	March 16, 2018
Director:	Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast: Language:	Ajay Devgn, Saurabh Shukla, Amit Sial, Ileana D’Cruz, Sheeba Chadha, Sulagna Panigrahi, Saanand Verma, Devas Dixit, Ravi Khanwilkar Hindi

An honest income-tax official conducts a carefully planned raid on one of the most powerful people in Uttar Pradesh. The lead star is Ajay Devgn. The director is the man who brought us Aamir and No One Killed Jessica. The year is 1981, back when sewing jewellery into mattresses and stashing cash under floor tiles was the order of the day among tax evaders.

Raj Kumar Gupta’s Raid works, for the most part, like a procedural drama. Devgn’s Amay Patnaik arrives at his new posting after being transferred from station to station as punishment for his integrity. Ritesh Shah’s writing largely mirrors this no-nonsense character, going about its business quietly and purposefully, and in the bargain throwing light on one of the least hailed of government departments.

Amay’s sincerity is established within minutes of his arrival on the scene. It is clear too right from the start that the enemy is not confined to the homes of wealthy families with unaccounted incomes. The enemy within is as lethal a combatant as any outside.

Apart from his associates, we also meet Amay’s wife Malini (Ileana D’Cruz) who unflinchingly supports him despite her exhaustion at the repeated packing and moving that have become constants in their life.

On the face of it, it could be said that Devgn has played precisely this part – a ramrod straight man within a broken system, doing his duty against all odds – a zillion times in his 27 year long career, yet there is a difference. In most of his previous such films, there was a superhero element to his role. In Singham, for instance, his Bajirao Singham virtually climbed pillars and walked on air to single-handedly bash up packs of goons. Here, in a production that strikes a far more realistic tone than the formulaic commercial Hindi cinema that dominates his filmography, Amay requires police protection to conduct his work freely, and is often afraid although he does not allow his fear to hamper his assignments.

Credible realism and Gupta’s unembellished directorial style are what make Raid such a gripping experience.

The film occasionally falters in this area – twice, to be precise, when the romantic songs Saanu Ek Pal and Nit Khair are needlessly jammed into the otherwise unrelentingly pacey proceedings. This trite device has been plucked out of the 1980s in which the tale is set, from the days when musical interludes were the primary means of portraying man-woman love in Bollywood and it was assumed that the audience wants such breaks within every powerful narrative. If anything, these numbers serve as irritating distractions in Raid, though thankfully they are brief enough to not be completely ruinous.

Once Amay’s team enters the house that is the fulcrum of the film’s action, Raid almost feels like a suspense thriller. Who is the informer who has given him such accurate information about a family with such clout? Will Amay manage to finish the task at hand or will he be disillusioned by how far the corrupt Tauji’s political allies will go to save him? And where on earth has Tauji hidden his ill-gotten riches?

As riveting as these questions is the realisation dawning on the viewer as the film rolls along, that income-tax officials operate in a very dangerous field. Potential transfers are nothing in comparison with the risk of actual physical harm that their targets could inflict upon them.

The manner in which Gupta leads up to this point is smooth and believable. It helps that he has picked a no-fuss cast who match his intent scene for scene, as does editor Bodhaditya Banerjee.

Devgn does brooding intensity better than most of his colleagues, and injects just the right amount of vulnerability into Amay to make him relatable. While some of the lines given to Amay (and wisely to Amay alone) hark back to the dialoguebaazi of an earlier era in Hindi cinema, the actor delivers them sans bombast to ensure that they are fun and do not sound dated.

Ileana as his wife gets limited screen time, but for what it is worth, she plays it well, achieving a nice note of indulgent bemusement in response to her husband’s often exasperating uprightness.

Saurabh Shukla as Tauji is the lynchpin of the striking supporting cast, with the screenplay giving him enough space to imbue the characterisation with interesting shades of gray. Sheeba Chadha as one of the bahus of his household and Amit Sial as Amay’s colleague are among the multiple satellite players who lend crucial detailing to their characters’ questionable morality.

Thankfully, none of the bad folk here are caricatures and one of the most enjoyable parts of Raid is Tauji’s relationship with his brusque, wizened old mother.

At 128 minutes and 3 seconds, Raid is just the right length for its pithy screenplay by Shah whose earlier credits include Citylights (2014) and Pink (2016). The opening text on screen informs us that it is “based on true stories”, and in the end we are told of the perils faced by income-tax officials in real life.

Media coverage and our own apathy have reduced these sarkari afsars to nothing but their nuisance value and the way they are misused by vengeful governments. Raid throws light on another crucial aspect of their story that we all ought to know, minus stereotypical Bollywood-style glorification of honest individuals. Barring those incongruous songs, the gendered language of the closing text on screen (which assumes that all income-tax officials are male, contrary to what we see even in Amay’s office) and a passing line about homosexuality that could perhaps have been better written, Raid is on point, insightful and engaging.

This is not the kind of fare you might expect to set your pulses racing, but that is precisely what it achieves in its closing scenes. Raid is not regular Bollywood. What it is though is thoroughly entertaining.

Rating (out of five stars): ***1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	128 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/raid-movie-review-ajay-devgns-brooding-intensity-raj-kumar-guptas-gripping-direction-add-up-to-a-winner-4392773.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_(2018_film)