REVIEW 718: JABARIYA JODI

Release date:	August 9, 2019
Director:	Prashant Singh
Cast: Language:	Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Jaaved Jaaferi, Sheeba Chadha, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra, Neeraj Sood, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Sharad Kapoor Hindi

The road to cinematic hell is paved with concepts that must have sounded good on paper. A handsome young man who abducts grooms for a living falls in love with an irrepressible young woman. Those who know Bihar well will be familiar with Abhay Singh's trade: his clients are the families of unmarried women who cannot afford the dowry being demanded by potential grooms, and therefore get eligible men kidnapped and forcibly married to their daughters. Babli Yadav's father is anxious to see her married, but her reputation for wildness has ruined her prospects. She has clarity about her feelings for Abhay but he is all mixed up in the head because of his parents' failed marriage.

This was material that an efficient, talented team may possibly have expanded into something worthwhile. Instead, writer Sanjeev K. Jha's imagination appears to have gone on vacation after a while and director Prashant Singh has such a weak hold on the reins that what we get in Jabariya Jodi are a series of contrived twists and turns trying hard to be surprising, a bunch of characters with zero depth, and a lead couple whose convoluted journey to their fate even they seem disinterested in.

Others who lost interest in the project while it was on include the half dozen or so musicians involved who have churned out the most generic soundtrack you could imagine. Macchardani – composed by Vishal Mishra, with lyrics by Raj Shekhar, sung by Mishra and Jyotica Tangri – is the only song worth remembering.

If you really want to know about the business of groom-napping in Bihar, read news reports. Jabariya Jodi is too boring and shallow to be taken seriously as a source of information.

Parineeti Chopra and Sidharth Malhotra play Babli and Abhay, who seem to forget their Bihari accents at some point. Can’t blame them. Maybe they were distracted by the really bad lines trying to sound smart scattered throughout the film. I was distracted too, but I think there was one assigned to his Daddy, a goonda and aspiring politician played by Jaaved Jaaferi, which went something like this: Tum bahu (daughter in law) ka soch rahey hai, hum bahumat (electoral majority) ka soch rahey hai.

At first it is not all bad. Jabariya Jodi has its moments of humour early on. And how can one not enjoy just gazing at the sinfully handsome Sidharth Malhotra? But after Abhay abducts a lot of people, then Babli abducts him, then Abhay abducts her, and they all head off on a road to nowhere (there are no spoilers here, the trailer has revealed all this already) it was a struggle to stay awake.

There are some scenes aspiring to be intellectual and emotionally profound along the way, scenes in which he discusses his fear that he may turn out to be a jerk like his father and is therefore afraid to hook up with a woman he genuinely loves. Maybe there was something there worth exploring, but this team is clearly not equipped for the job.

Fine supporting artistes like Sheeba Chadha, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra and Chandan Roy Sanyal are criminally frittered away in Jabariya Jodi. As for the leads, it is hard not to feel sad about their wasted potential.

Parineeti Chopra had shown great spark in her debut film Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl (2011), but has since then seemed more invested in publicising her impressive weight loss than picking solid scripts. There is only so far that your bright diamond-like eyes can take you, Ms.

Malhotra deserves better but either does not have the right instincts for scripts or is just not getting good offers. Either way, the hottie from Student of the Year and Ek Villain, he whose eyes can by turns be pools of pain, longing and mischief, he who gave so much to the lovely Kapoor & Sons and Ittefaq, is too good for the bland fare that has dominated his filmography since 2012. Jabariya Jodi makes the worst of his films so far look worthy of National Awards though. For one, it has the depth of a teaspoon. More important, it is dull dull dull.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA (bookmyshow)
Running time:	144 minutes (bookmyshow)

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/jabariya-jodi-movie-review-sidharth-malhotra-is-too-hot-and-happening-for-such-bland-fare-7135641.html

Visuals courtesy: Spice PR

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)