REVIEW 790: MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

Release date:	January 12, 2024
Director:	Sriram Raghavan
Cast:	Katrina Kaif, Vijay Sethupathi, Sanjay Kapoor, Pari Maheshwari Sharma, Vinay Pathak, Pratima Kannan, Luke Kenny, Cameos: Radhika Apte, Gayathrie Shankar
Language:	2 versions of this film were shot – one Tamil, one Hindi – with different supporting casts. This is a review of the Hindi version.

 

“So this is Christmas / And what have you done?”

These words from the 1971 John Lennon-Yoko Ono song Happy Xmas (War Is Over) flash on the screen as a prelude to the director Sriram Raghavan’s Merry Christmas. They are played in quick succession with a tribute to Shakti Samanta and a teaser featuring the film’s stars Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi. The teaser alerts us to Raghavan’s intent to deceive and reveal in equal measure minus melodrama through this narrative. 

 

Happy Xmas – credited here to Lennon alone – is an introspective carol that “emerged from an era of activism and opposition to the Vietnam War”, as a blog by a Lecturer of International Politics on the University of Liverpool’s website explains. There are no manipulative global superpowers at work in Raghavan’s Merry Christmas. The battle here is familial, resulting in an unexpected alliance. And the director’s treatment is devised as a paean to Samanta, maker of such classic thrillers as Howrah Bridge (1958), China Town (1962) and Kati Patang (1971). 

 

Raghavan is a master of mystery. His filmography includes the stop-in-your-tracks delightful Andhadhun (2018), and his gripping debut feature Ek Hasina Thi (2004). Merry Christmas – an adaptation of the French novel Le Monte-Charge(English title: Bird in a Cage) by Frédéric Dard, with a Hindi script by Raghavan, Arijit Biswas, Pooja Ladha Surti (also the editor) and Anukriti Pandey – is a crime drama aspiring to be a love saga. It is a slow burn that is intriguing in its first hour, but declines after its big reveal. 

 

Since even minor specifics could be spoilers, here is a broad introduction to Merry Christmas’ plot. Kaif plays Maria who runs a bakery in Mumbai. She is married and a mother. Her daughter Annie is mute. Sethupathi’s Albert is returning home to Mumbai after several years, following his mother’s passing. When their paths cross, Albert feels an inexplicable empathy for Maria that goes beyond the appeal of her good looks. His past quickly catches up with him though, so he walks away after a warm encounter. When Albert realises that he is not the only one with a secret, however, he is fascinated and unable to stay away. 

 

Few Hindi directors have explored film noir as persistently as Raghavan has and made it his own. Merry Christmas’ gold-tinged world of warm lighting and shadow-rimmed frames has a furtive quality from the start. Its tone is deceptively understated as Maria and Albert go about their business on what initially seems like a routine evening for two lonely people on the town scoping each other out. Yet Raghavan builds an atmosphere aimed at keeping a viewer’s antennae on alert. 

 

The screen is filled with suggestive imagery that plays with our minds and plays on the traditions of crime fiction: a character who sculpts origami swans, speechless little Annie (Pari Maheshwari Sharma) with the innocent wide eyes, a high-ceilinged apartment in a building with an ornate cage for an elevator, an attractive trinket, a watchful giant teddy bear. Besides, Maria and Albert have an aura of sadness about them, and they’re alone in a big city on Christmas eve, a time usually spent with family and community. Something’s gotta give. Obviously. 

 

The determined refusal to pinpoint the year in which this story is set adds to its inscrutability. 

 

I enjoyed Merry Christmas’ opening hour immensely, the sense of expectation, Kaif’s sweetness, Sethupathi’s extraordinary ability to elevate even stray words and glances into moments of great humour or poignance, the empathetic gaze on Maria in this troubling era of Animals and animosity, the art design, the cinematic references, the vintage tunes complementing Pritam and Daniel B. George’s music, Maria and Albert’s lively dance, and a slimeball played deliciously by Sanjay Kapoor. It is also nice to see a normalised representation of a religious minority that is not often visible in Hindi films these days, and an acknowledgement of the diversity within the community that an earlier era of Hindi cinema restricted to Goans and Anglo-Indians. Albert’s full name is Albert Arogyasami, but he is neither a caricatured Christian nor the stereotyped ‘Madrasi’ that Hindi filmdom was once notorious for. However, after a grand deception is unmasked – I can’t say more than this – the writing and direction get lax, the unplugged holes in the deception become apparent immediately and a glaring giveaway is even allowed to linger by the perpetrator.

 

The understatedness that works in Merry Christmas’ favour through much of the narrative delivers diminishing returns from then on, culminating in a climax with limited impact. What is missing in that final stretch is a magnetic pull between the leads and an urgency in the build-up that was sorely needed for the ending to provide a release. It doesn’t help that Maria’s character remains under-explored in comparison with Albert’s, or that Kaif’s likeability is no match for Sethupathi’s casual brilliance. As a consequence, as the curtain falls, it is possible to read Albert’s motivations and emotion but Maria is still an enigma, so it cannot be said with certainty whether she is driven by anything more than desperation and gratitude. 

 

The last half hour of Merry Christmas feels as if it was left to direct and edit itself and rely on the leading man’s speaking eyes to fill any gaps at that point. 

 

The philosophy behind the film is encapsulated by Albert in this sentence: “Sometimes violence is better than sacrifice.” Ultimately, Merry Christmas suggests that violence inevitably necessitates sacrifice – by someone – but the closing is too loosely handled for the point to be compelling.

 

Merry Christmas succeeds considerably as a thriller before losing its way, but is unable to establish itself as a romance. A pity, because while the going is good, it really is damn good. 

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75   

 

Footnote: The credits walk a tightrope with a smartness that made me smile. Kaif’s name comes first in the beginning, Sethupathi’s comes first in the closing scroll, in a nod to their massive stardom in their respective industries, Hindi and Tamil, without succumbing to the gender bias that pervades all Indian film industries or ignoring concerns about Hindi belt supremacism. 

 

Running time:

144 minutes

 

Poster courtesy: IMDB 

REVIEW 788: THE ARCHIES

 

Release date:	December 7, 2023
Director:	Zoya Akhtar
Cast:	Agastya Nanda, Khushi Kapoor, Suhana Khan, Vedang Raina, Mihir Ahuja, Aditi “Dot” Saigal, Yuvraj Menda, Suhaas Ahuja, Tara Sharma, Satyajit Sharma, Alyy Khan, Kamal Sidhu, Luke Kenny, Vinay Pathak
Language:	Hindi and English

 

“I get a huge kick out of life. But I just don’t think about politics. What’s it got to do with my life?” Archibald/Archie Andrews asks his teacher Miss Grundy in reaction to his classmates’ concerns that the changes being wrought in their hill station, Riverdale, are driven by corporate interest, not public welfare. The year: 1964. But Archie echoes a standpoint adopted by so many people today too whose excuse for their silence on even fascism and genocide is, “I’m apolitical.”

 

The other students – all of them 17 – break into a song and dance to address Archie’s apathy, kicked off by Dilton Doiley singing: “In every fold of life, there’s politics.” It is with this lively passage that The Archies perks up, after a disappointingly bland 1 hour and 6 minutes. 

 

The Archies is the producer-writer-director Zoya Akhtar’s Hindi-English adaptation of the iconic US comic books. As you can imagine from the preceding paragraphs, Archie Comics – a frothy series about American high schoolers – provides just a sliver of a framework for Akhtar, Ayesha Devitre Dhillon and Reema Kagti’s script. The film’s updated politics, the decision to set it among Anglo Indians in north India and the non-stereotypical portrayal of the community are among The Archies’ exciting elements. Sadly, they are not effectively sewn together. The whimsicality Akhtar seems to have aimed at translates into low energy in the opening hour, and while the film picks up in the second half, it never fully recovers from the limpness of the first. 

 

Archie Comics began publication in the 1940s, revolving around an eponymous American teenager infatuated by the glamourous, wealthy and snobbish Veronica/Ronnie Lodge, and oblivious to the devotion of the pretty, golden-hearted and middle-class Betty Cooper. The vain and good-looking Reginald/Reggie Mantle was a flirt and Archie’s rival for Ronnie’s attentions. The other significant players included the gluttonous Jughead Jones, the muscular dimbulb Moose, the studious Dilton, and Ethel Muggs, a gawky girl smitten by Jughead who was repelled by her. 

 

In the early decades, “Archie and the gang” rarely rose above these basic characteristics. Their popularity was precisely because of this superficiality: the one-dimensional characters that did not strain the brain, a mild sense of humour, pretty outfits, pretty people, a clueless but non-malicious lead, and for Indian teens up to the 1980s, a glimpse into an alluring foreign land of tiny skirts and ice cream sundaes that were a rare sight here back then. Thankfully, Akhtar and her co-writers’ love of Archie Comics does not extend to the politics of the series that pitted two women against each other for a dull man’s affections, or the reductive gaze on the others. 

 

The manner in which the Ronnie-Archie-Betty triangle is turned on its head in The Archies is what intelligent adaptations are made of. (Spoilers: In the film, Archie dates multiple women without being honest with them. This quality is not pedestalised here unlike in conventional pop culture. Akhtar & Co’s Ethel calls Archie out for being a philanderer, and when Ronnie and Betty realise he is two-timing them, they tell him he’s not worth more than their friendship with each other.) It was also a smart move to situate the film among Anglo Indians, a community that traces its ancestry to the children of Indian and British parents in the colonial era. This allows The Archies to retain the names of the characters from the American comics – “Dilton Doiley” is a stretch, “Jughead Jones” required a backgrounder, but the rest could well be actual Anglo Indian names. Meanwhile, the north Indian location justifies the English-Hindi amalgam in the dialogues.

 

For the most part, however, the link between the film and the books is tenuous to the point of being superfluous. Reggie, for one, is nothing like the Reggie of the comics, barring a token allusion to an interest in Ronnie, and an introduction in which he makes out with a woman in a car. Akhtar’s Reggie is socially conscious, an aspiring journalist and a student activist. Sometimes the film introduces a connection to the books and promptly forgets it (the Archie-Ronnie-Reggie triangle, the Ethel-Jughead equation). Some characters are given short shrift (Mr Weatherbee, Pop Tate). Some are present but redundant (Moose). Akhtar and her team also seem not to have aimed for one of the hallmarks of Archie Comics, a sense of humour, unless you count Reggie’s Dad pooh-poohing his son’s prescient remark that comedy can be a career. Ha. Come visit us in 2023, Dad. 

 

Ultimately, there’s no satisfactory answer to why The Archies is an adaptation of Archie Comics rather than a brand new desi teen drama. This film is also no match for Akhtar’s track record as a director. It has neither the observational power of Luck By Chance, nor the ruminative depth and pizzazz of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Dil Dhadakne Do, nor the grit, gumption and visceral energy of Gully Boy. It does, however, come across as a personal work in its own way. 

 

Zoya Akhtar is 51, which means she was a teenager when Archie Comics were all the rage among Indian teens. She turned 18 in a decade when the country transitioned to satellite television. MTV and the desi youth platform Channel V epitomised adolescent and young-adult coolth in the rapidly transforming India of the 1990s. If The Archies per se is her tribute to the comics, then the casting in part is a bow to the ’90s, with some of MTV and V’s earliest Indian VJs being roped in to play senior characters – Kamal Sidhu is Ronnie’s mother, Luke Kenny is Reggie’s Dad, Vinay Pathak is a villainous neta. When you think of it that way, it’s sweet, a sort of love letter to a generation. 

 

The casting of the young leads seems just as personal to Akhtar. It comes across as a big fat middle finger to the online mobs hurling charges of nepotism at her industry. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Archie in The Archies is played by Agastya Nanda, grandson of Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, and great grandson of Raj Kapoor; Ronnie is Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana Khan; in Betty’s role is Sridevi and Boney Kapoor’s daughter, Khushi Kapoor. 

 

The kids are neither great, nor awful. Khushi and Agastya are cute. She could be special. He lacks verve here, but comes alive while dancing. Suhana reveals a spark during Ronnie and Betty’s face-off over Mr Lodge. She could work on that. Would the trio have snagged such plum roles if it weren’t for their lineage? Unlikely. But it does not make sense to blame them entirely for the narrative’s limited vitality, which is a fault of the direction, although they do contribute to it. 

 

The rest of the cast are vastly better. The stand-out debutant is Vedang Raina playing Reggie. He can act, he can dance, he is handsome, but most important, he has screen presence and is born to be a star. Yuvraj Menda who plays Dilton and Dot i.e. Ethel are comfortable before the camera. 

 

The Archies is not a typical Bollywood musical. In terms of structure and sound, it is Bollywood’s nod to Hollywood/Broadway, although the background score (by Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Satya) and songs (by SEL, Ankur Tewari, The Islanders and Dot) are more distinctive and tuneful than what the average Hollywood/Broadway musical delivers. 

 

The most heart-warming aspect of The Archies is its depiction of Anglo Indians. Up to the 1990s, Hindi cinema inexorably stereotyped Christians, and confined the community to a clichéd notion of Goans and Anglo Indians. Christians almost disappeared from Hindi films thereon. The Archies’ characters are people, not cartoons. By not referencing their religion at all and focusing on their ethnic identity, Akhtar does something Hindi cinema has rarely done before: she points to diversity within a small religious minority. Anglo Indians, after all, are a minority within a minority. 

 

The diversity in this sub-group is also on display. While most women in The Archies wear dresses, as would have been the reality among 1960s Anglo Indians, note the women in saris and churidar kurtas especially in the opening montage and at the club. Farhan Akhtar’s dialogues are a smooth English-Hindi blend, with the kids mixing both, like city-bred youth across communities, while the adults are shown to have a spectrum of adeptness with Hindi – one parent struggles with “hoyenga” vs “hoga”, the others tease him about it. Sari/kurta-clad Anglo Indians who speak Hindi well are very much a reality, though you would not know that from Hindi cinema of a bygone era.  

 

The film even snubs its nose at the Right-wing that has always conflated Christians with British imperialists. The Archies’characters are invested in India’s future and have contributed to our past. Reggie’s granddad, like many Christians, was a freedom fighter. The Archies is thus a lesson in showcasing patriotism truthfully, unlike the Akshay Kumar brand of propagandist cinema.

 

So, The Archies’ politics is worth rooting for. Normalised minority representation here extends to a gay boy who is not defined by his sexuality. Even the generic storyline is imbued with layers of meaning as it mimics real-world events in India today: big business buying politicians, corporates muzzling the press, and more. The storytelling is too flat for too long though to be redeemed.  

 

The kids in The Archies were born in 1947, and are 17 in the film. They embody an Independent India, but belong to a community that in today’s India is told they do not belong. The Archies has a lot to say about that and much else, but flubs its tone and tenor. When your source material is almost irrelevant to the point you wish to make, a floundering end product is perhaps inevitable. Akhtar could have heeded Archie’s father’s advice when the boy says he wishes to leave India for England to build a music career. “To make art,” says Dad, “you have to go in, not out.” 

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.5   

 

Running time:

144 minutes

 

Poster courtesy: IMDB 

REVIEW 425: ISLAND CITY

Release date:	September 2, 2016
Director:	Ruchika Oberoi
Cast: Language:	Vinay Pathak, Amruta Subhash, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Uttara Baokar, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Ashwin Mushran, Samir Kochhar, Voices of Rajat Kapoor and Manav Kaul Hindi with some English and Marathi

Island City is set in Mumbai but its premise would be relevant to any megapolis in the world. Come to think of it, the film may purportedly be about this big city or any big city, but with a tweak here and there it could fit just as well into a less imposing setting.

Ruchika Oberoi makes her directorial debut with a cinematic triptych about the robotic nature of too many lives in this world. The film covers an employee who mechanically follows a routine and his bosses’ instructions, a wife who makes a show of mourning the possible loss of a boorish husband, and a daughter who goes along with her parents’ choice of groom because she feels no other man would be interested in her and she has not even considered a life without one.

Though the urban backdrop may seem crucial to the narrative, it is not. Take away the swanky office and dictatorial organisation, and that employee could still be a worker in small-town India glad that he has a job, any job, rather than one that excites him. Take away the visual landmarks like the Mumbai trains, and those women resigned to fate could be from a small town too. And the themes could fit into pretty much any country. It is fascinating to see the manner in which those themes remain universal despite the cultural and locational specificities in this telling.

The title may suggest that this is a film about apathetic, impersonal cities. That is the more obvious subject matter, but the film is really about people who live life and live out relationships like automatons, people who are afraid to exit their comfort zones, including those for whom life in its entirety is a regret-filled compromise – unless fate intervenes.

Segment 1 titled “Fun Committee” is about corporate zombie Suyash Chaturvedi (Vinay Pathak) winning a day off from work, with a ‘fun’ schedule planned down to the last T by his office’s HR department. He is supposed to relax and enjoy himself, but if he does not comply with the detailed directives issued to him, he will be penalised by the management.

Next comes “The Ghost in the Machine” featuring a middle-class housewife called Sarita Joshi (Amruta Subhash) whose husband is in hospital hooked to life support systems. To ease the family’s tension, she purchases a TV, a distraction her despotic husband did not allow in the house. They get hooked on the tele-soap Purushottam when they receive some good news.

Meanwhile, in the city’s poorer quarters in “Contact”, Aarti Patel (Tannishtha Chatterjee) works at a printing press. She is a quiet, uncomplaining sort, but a sense of dissatisfaction with her dull existence is growing inside her when she receives an intimate letter one day.

Most viewers expect the individual strands in multi-strand films to intersect at some point. In the best films of this genre, the sub-sets can stand on their own even if the plot does not connect them. Many filmmakers feel compelled to link them, sometimes doing so to brilliant effect, sometimes awkwardly. Island City’s three tales are linked smoothly, thematically and by plot.

“Fun Committee” and “The Ghost in the Machine” are based on stories by Oberoi, “Contact” is by Siddharth Sharma. The screenplay is Oberoi’s. On the face of it, these are simple stories, yet they are filled with keen insights wrapped around existential questions. On the face of it these are oft-visited topics, but they are elevated by Oberoi’s incisive writing and her cast.

Boring ol’ Suyash is a role tailormade for Pathak who is adept at playing the common person, but that does not translate into a predictable performance. The actor lends enough nuances to his character to take him to places we are not expecting. I particularly enjoyed hearing him address a senior as “Sir”, giving the word a slight accent that made it sound comically deferential.

Chatterjee is aptly cast as Aarti in Story 3 and finds a perfect foil in the dynamic Chandan Roy Sanyal playing her egoistic fiancé Jignesh who seems comfortable with her primarily because he is convinced that she is too unattractive and unadventurous to ever draw the attention of or be drawn to another man. Sanyal is one of the finest character actors in contemporary Hindi cinema and it is a pleasure to see him in a substantial role that does justice to his charisma.

The lovely Marathi film actress Subhash, who sparkled recently in Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi film Raman Raghav 2.0, shares screen space here with the equally lovely veteran Uttara Baokar.

Acting, writing, satirical comedy and pathos – it all falls into place in their story, the most unapologetically impertinent of the lot. The juxtaposition of Sarita’s strained marriage against a TV show about an ideal husband, for instance, cheekily implies that such men can be found only in the imagination of soap scriptwriters. The relationship between the two women is especially intriguing because the filmmaker leaves us guessing about whether they are mother and daughter or mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The old lady lives with Sarita and her husband, which, if you go by Indian custom, suggests that she is the ma-in-law. Sarita addresses her as Aai, the Marathi word for mother, though that could be in keeping with that other Indian convention, of treating your in-laws as parents. But their attachment is far removed from the antagonism stereotypically assumed to be a hallmark of all real-life saas-bahu rishtas, nor do they share an unbelievably syrupy equation of the kind often shown in silly serials such as the one they are currently watching. So are they maa-beti or saas-bahu? Either way, they come across as buddies and co-conspirators with great empathy and affection for each other. This is an enjoyable instance of female bonding not seen often enough in Indian cinema.

That said, Island City is a well-woven whole. Sarita’s saga is the most overtly entertaining of the three. The other two take some time to reveal their verve, then amply reward viewer patience with the shock value of “Fun Committee” and the unexpected (tragic) twists in “Contact”.

Oberoi does not alter her seemingly laidback though assured directorial manner in any segment, but the production design by Krishnendu Chowdhury and cinematography by Sylvester Fonseca are cleverly used to give each one a distinctive look. The steely shades of “Fun Committee” lend to it a slightly surreal, futuristic feel, to go with its deliberately exaggerated swipes at corporate India and its farcical tone. “The Ghost in the Machine” is warmly lit in Purushottam and in Sarita’s house, to be contrasted with the cold colours of the hospital where her husband now lies and the flashback to the time when he was well. “Contact” has grimy shades, much like the garbage spills Aarti passes on her way to her dreary work.

Island City was premiered last year at the world’s oldest known film fiesta, the Venice Film Festival, where it won an award for Best Debut Director. The honour is well deserved. Ruchika Oberoi’s understated style, on-point writing and sense of humour are significant new additions to the Indian cinemascape. Island City is a sorrowful yet amusing, acutely observant film.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	111 minutes

Poster, stills and trailer courtesy: Loudspeaker Media

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgkddfuOupA&feature=youtu.be

REVIEW 318: BADLAPUR

Release date (India):	February 20, 2015
Director:	Sriram Raghavan
Cast: Language:	Varun Dhawan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Yami Gautam, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Divya Dutta, Kumud Mishra, Zakir Hussain, Vinay Pathak Hindi

“Don’t Miss The Beginning” is not just a promotional tagline we saw in the trailer. As it turns out, Badlapur: Don’t Miss The Beginning is the full title you will see on the Censor certificate and opening credit plate of director Sriram Raghavan’s latest cinematic offering.

It’s almost like an announcement and you’d better believe it, because the first 10-15 minutes of this film are perfectly edited, intelligently directed and very cleverly written. I think I stopped breathing for part of that time, initially caught up in intrigued anticipation, then in utter shock and then overwhelmed with curiosity about what might follow.

Sadly, the rest of the film doesn’t match up. The primary reason is that the denouement is anti-climactic. Badlapur also needed to quicken its pace and take a surgeon’s knife to its flab.

The aim appears to have been to create a ruminative, calm and collected thriller. It might have worked too if so many well-crafted scenes raising expectations weren’t followed by dampeners. This is a disappointment for those of us who loved Raghavan’s excellently paced Ek Hasina Thi and Johnny Gaddaar (let’s pretend we never saw Agent Vinod).

Here’s how Badlapur goes. A bright young Pune-based ad executive called Raghu (Varun Dhawan) loses his family to two bank robbers. One escapes the police while the other is caught, refuses to reveal his accomplice’s name and is sentenced to 20 years in prison. As Raghu unravels before our eyes, three questions seem designed keep us viewers hooked:

Why did this criminal give up his liberty rather than give up his partner in crime?

Why did he choose (yes he actually chose) to be the one who is caught of the two?

Did he have a specific plan that would benefit him more than his abettor?

You may accept that the answer to Question 1 is: loyalty, with a resultant financial pay-off being the light  at the end of that dark tunnel. You may assume, once you’ve watched the post-interval portion, that the answer to Question 2 is: Liak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) was sure Harman (Vinay Pathak) would buckle under the pressure of a police interrogation or prison. Fair enough. The utter let-down is the answer – or the lack of it – to Question 3.

Where Badlapur gets things right though, it really gets it right: that introduction; the strength of the writing when the going is good (a pity about those intermittent troughs); Sachin-Jigar’s songs; and some wicked editing between murders that leaves the audience briefly confused. 

Siddiqui rules. The man just outdoes himself in each scene. Badlapur is his master class in acting. The supporting cast too is amazing, in particular that lovely girl Radhika Apte who we need to see more in Bollywood, Pathak, Kumud Mishra and Zakir Hussain who shines though he gets just a few minutes on screen. In fact, a Siddiqui-Hussain face-off is Badlapur’s best scene.

As for Varun Dhawan, no, I will not say he is a pleasant surprise because it was clear from Student of the Year (SOTY) that both he and Sid Malhotra were capable of much more than fluff (Alia Bhatt proved herself only subsequently). Dhawan doesn’t yet have the depth of his co-stars in Badlapur but it’s clear that he’s got the potential to grow into that depth. He has also evidently worked hard to largely subsume that cutesy drawl with which he speaks naturally and which is fine in bubblegum pop cinema but not in a grittier film like Badlapur. It is a joy to see that this young star, with a triad of box-office hits in the young romance genre – SOTY (2012), Main Tera Hero (2014), Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (2014) – is keen to expand his repertoire and range.

The only point at which the director becomes slightly conscious that Dhawan is a star with teen fans leads to an entirely superfluous moment in which Raghu needlessly strips off his shirt to display a deliciously ripped torso and arms, right before he commits an act of extreme violence.

SPOILER AHEAD

A more troublesome superfluous moment comes during the song-and-dance accompanying the closing credits, during which Huma Qureshi throws come-hither looks at Dhawan, which is jarring since Raghu had repeatedly raped her character, a sex worker called Jhimli/Shabnam. Why does Bollywood so often divorce the closing songs of films from the preceding story? In this instance, was Team Badlapur being thoughtless? Or can it be that they take rape lightly? Or do they, like so many others, believe that assaulting a sex worker is not as heinous as raping other women? Odd, because Raghavan showed such sensitivity towards his heroine in Ek Hasina Thi. 

Badlapur then is inconsistent, often praiseworthy, too often not, occasionally even tacky – oh why wasn’t that aspiring-to-be-profound game of Scrabble scissored out?! The film raises some interesting questions about what vengeance does to those who seek it. It also boasts of many memorable scenes peopled with brilliant actors. The overall feeling though is one of a sporadically, episodically effective film that doesn’t quite add up.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	135 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badlapur_(film)

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KEoZanqlOE 

Trailer courtesy: Everymedia PR