REVIEW 464: IRADA

Release date:	February 17, 2017
Director:	Aparnaa Singh
Cast: Language:	Arshad Warsi, Naseeruddin Shah, Divya Dutta, Sharad Kelkar, Rajesh Sharma, Sagarika Ghatge  Hindi

It is called the “Cancer Train”, christened thus by locals because it transports scores of cancer patients from Bathinda in Punjab to the city of Bikaner, Rajasthan, for treatment. Available media reports suggest that the surge in cancer cases in Bathinda is a result of the uncontrolled use of pesticides by the region’s farmers. This week’s Hindi film release Irada points us in another direction: groundwater pollution caused by local industry.

For red-flagging an unnerving issue alone, Irada deserves kudos. Director Aparnaa Singh’s film is about an explosion in a plant owned by an influential businessman called Paddy Sharma (Sharad Kelkar) who derives his power from the funds he supplies to the state’s ruling party. Chief Minister Ramandeep Braitch (Divya Dutta) is in his pocket and agrees to hush up the motive behind the blast, since it might have something to do with the waste disposal methods practised at the factory. She calls in NIA officer Arjun Mishra (Arshad Warsi) to do the job for her. Also in the picture are the writer Parbjeet Walia (Naseeruddin Shah) and journalist Maya Singh (Sagarika Ghatge of Chak De fame) whose activist boyfriend disappears under mysterious circumstances.

The basic theme is laudable no doubt, but Irada fails to expand the premise into a relatable flesh-and-blood story peopled by flesh-and-blood sufferers. If we view it purely for its worth as a documentary, the information it provides is sketchy. As a fiction feature, it has limited value because it deals in broad brush strokes and a macro view of the situation instead of drawing us into a micro view of individuals reeling under this calamity.

There is a woman in a hospital whose child looks on as she tells a cop about a sacrifice her husband made to pay for her treatment. Perhaps we could have been better acquainted with her? Or that mother who describes the train’s passengers to a stranger as matter-of-factly as if she were speaking of a regular tourist vehicle?

But no, the writers – Singh herself with Anushka Ranjan – give these characters mere seconds in Irada, dwelling instead on the authorities’ efforts to cover up their crimes. Fair enough. The story of evil is worth telling too. Sadly, here again the scanty screenplay reduces the persons involved to summaries rather than full-blown people.

Instead of being a human-interest saga, Irada tries to be a thriller. There were possibilities there too. Who engineered the blast? Why? More important, how did the culprit manage to execute the plan? On this front too, the film does not take off because its bare-bones account of the investigation is just so silly.

Mishra, for instance, stares at walls, wrings his hands and snatches deductions out of thin air. Walia recites poetry that is supposedly filled with clues – it is meant to sound clever but is not. Singh has almost nothing to do, thus ensuring that next time too we will be compelled to describe Ghatge as “Sagarika Ghatge of Chak De fame”. And the big reveal in the end is a damp squib not because it is not a surprise, but because I no longer gave a damn.

Imagine a film boasting of names like Warsi, Shah, Dutta and Rajesh Sharma in its credits, yet not extracting a single memorable moment from them in its 110 minutes. It is not that they are bad here, but that they are ordinary – which is what talented actors often are when confronted with uninspiring writing and lax direction.

It is heartbreaking for any film buff to see Warsi wander passionlessly through this project just seven days after the release of Jolly LLB 2, a brand that owes much of its recall value to his performance as the protagonist in its wonderful precursor, Jolly LLB. Is this marvellous actor doing something wrong or does Bollywood have skewed priorities, that he has been replaced in Part 2 by Akshay Kumar – a superstar no doubt, but not in the same league as an artiste – while Warsi himself is relegated to being the lead in a half-baked, low-profile venture like Irada?

That question is just a small part of the tragedy that is this new film. Punjab’s “Cancer Train” should be the subject of multiple Indian films and media reports. Little purpose is served though if you zero in on a crucial theme but do not breathe  life into it. Irada (meaning: intent) is an opportunity lost to draw mass attention to a pressing concern. What a waste!

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

  

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	110 minutes 7 seconds

This article was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/irada-movie-review-arshad-warsi-naseeruddin-shah-and-a-cancer-train-are-lost-to-poor-treatment-3287726.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irada_(2017_film)

REVIEW 91: MILEY NAA MILEY HUM

Release date:	November 4, 2011
Director:	Tanveer Khan
Cast:	Chirag Paswan, Poonam Dhillon, Kabir Bedi, Kangna Ranaut, Sagarika Ghatge, Neeru Bajwa

The good thing about Miley Naa Miley Hum is that it marks the debut of a sweet-looking actor called Chirag Paswan. Politician Ram Vilas Paswan’s son has a pleasant presence on screen and a well worked out body (though I can imagine my mother smacking him between the shoulder blades and telling him to improve his posture). The other positive point is that I actually enjoyed Kangna Ranaut’s performance – it’s been a while since that’s happened! Here’s an actress who started off being so interesting but somehow somewhere lost her way with her awkward diction, poor voice modulation and disappointing choice of roles. In Miley Naa Miley Hum she looks refreshingly pretty and is genuinely funny playing a guileless, accident-prone model.

So what’s the story? Paswan Junior plays Chirag Mehra, a rising tennis star whose warring parents have torn him asunder all his life. He’s determined to divide his time between them until he finds a way to get them together again. So, he works at his father Siddharth Mehra’s vineyard but also travels to the city to help his mother manage her business empire. Trouble starts when mom (Poonam Dhillon) tries to fix him up with her London-based friend’s daughter Kamiah Malhotra (Chak De girl Sagarika Ghatge) while dad (Kabir Bedi) gets into competitive mode and promises him to Manjeet Ahluwalia (Neeru Bajwa), the daughter of his boisterous, rustic buddy from Bhatinda. Chirag is not interested in marriage, so in an inspired moment he points to a model on a hoarding (Anishka played by Ranaut) and claims he’s in love with her.

If you think about it, that précis is filled with promise, and the catchy song Katto Gilheri Chamak Challo Rani featuring a lovely-looking Shweta Tiwari arrives early in the narrative to suggest that this film will be an entertainer. But Miley Naa Miley Hum’s dialogues are amateurish, and the script fails to flesh out most of its characters or explore their relationships with any depth. So it’s nice to see older actors get so much screen time playing Chirag’s parents, but the reason for their animosity towards each other is never established although it’s the fulcrum of the film. We are told in passing that he was playing tennis while she was in labour, which led her to believe that the game was more important to him than his wife, but … naah, that sounds too flimsy to be credible. Again, since Chirag coped with his parents’ hatred for each other throughout his childhood, the circumstances that drive him over the edge as an adult don’t seem compelling enough; nor does the director manage to make us share Chirag’s desperation to re-unite mom and dad.

Manjeet from Bhatinda is a parasite, but Chirag seems fond of Kamiah from London … Why then is a sweet guy like him so insensitive to her feelings? Why does he not bother to explain to her his reasons for opposing their match? Manjeet, incidentally, is introduced to us in the film’s most ridiculous scene: Siddharth Mehra phones her father during her engagement party and expresses a desire to have her as his bahu; daddy dear simply gets off the phone and cancels her engagement … because apparently that’s what you do for a good friend … and when her fiancé’s family gets furious, Manjeet yells at them … because she blindly believes that her father must have a good reason for doing what he did, no questions asked! Yeah sure! Very convincing! Ranaut’s character Anishka is introduced to us in an understatedly amusing scene (she tastes sushi for the first time and describes it as “kachchi machchhi”) but she then disappears for a long gap, and nothing is done to keep her on our minds in the interregnum. The tennis match in the finale should have been a high-adrenaline experience but it’s not written or edited well enough for that. There is an adopted brother in the picture who loyally follows Chirag everywhere, but we are told little about him. Besides director Tanveer Khan is so focused on the hero’s looks that he allows the make-up artist to coat Paswan Junior’s face with too much pancake, while allowing spots to show on Ranaut’s skin in several shots.

We’ve seen children of broken or troubled marriages in other Hindi films (Akele Hum Akele Tum, Life In A Metro, We Are Family) but it’s unusual for Bollywood to deal with the impact of a parental split on adult offspring. Miley Naa Miley Hum is not insufferable, it’s even nice in places, but it sorely lacks depth! Still, there’s something likeable about debutant Chirag Paswan – and that’s something to hold on to.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating:                       U without cuts

Running time:                        125 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/#!/MNMHthemovie