REVIEW 320: AB TAK CHHAPPAN 2

Release date (India):	February 27, 2015
Director:	Aejaz Gulab
Cast: Language:	Nana Patekar, Ashutosh Rana, Gul Panag, Govind Namdeo, Vikram Gokhale, Mohan Agashe, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Raj Zutshi Hindi

Sadhu Agashe is back. Eleven years after Shimit Amin’s Ab Tak Chhappan (ATC) comes its sequel directed by Aejaz Gulab. Both are reportedly inspired by real-life Mumbai policeman Daya Nayak who earned the epithet “encounter specialist” in the 1990s for the number of gangsters he had eliminated. In the films he is a fictionalised Sadhu Agashe (Nana Patekar).

ATC1 (produced by Ram Gopal Varma) followed Agashe through his daily battles on the streets of India’s commercial capital, the internal politics in the force, police corruption and the murder of his wife. It was a compelling film. The sequel, on the other hand, comes off feeling generic.

At the start of Ab Tak Chhappan 2, Mumbai is reeling under a crime wave and gang wars. Maharashtra’s Gandhian chief minister Anna (Dilip Prabhavalkar) wants to cleanse the city, and on the advise of the now retired Police Commissioner Pradhan (Mohan Agashe), Sadhu is coaxed out of his premature retirement in Goa by Anna-saab’s second-in-command, Home Minister Jagirdar (Vikram Gokhale). Agashe is initially reluctant because of his earlier unpleasant experiences with the force, but is persuaded to return by his son who reminds him that he is a cop at heart and will always remain one. Back in Mumbai, Sadhu throws himself into his job, only to discover that the more things change the more they remain the same.

ATC1 was about the internecine wars in the Mumbai police. ATC2 is about the relationship between the police and the political establishment. As with the first film, here too Sadhu can’t see eye to eye with one of his strong-willed juniors (played by Yashpal Sharma in the first film and Ashutosh Rana in this one). There’s a been-there-seen-that feel to the whole thing including Nana Patekar’s one-note performance. As Sadhu he is given lengthy monologues which he delivers in his trademark monotone that has earned him so much critical acclaim over the years that the actor in him often seems not to be trying to expand his repertoire of expressions. 

On the positive side, the film dwells at some length on the rather sweet relationship between Sadhu and his son, which is more relaxed and buddy-like than most father-son relationships we see in Bollywood, without seeming contrived like the bond between the Bachchans’ characters in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. ATC2 also works at an interesting dual pace: relaxed and calm when we first meet the protagonist in his Goan idyll; unrelentingly in motion when he is at work once he returns to the Mumbai police force, with the camerawork and editing complemented by Sandeep Chowta’s background score, all designed to make it seem as if the portions where he is on the job were each done in a single, very long, continuous take. The pace, however, can’t compensate for the feeling of déjà vu that the story and the acting carry, or its verbosity, or the predictability of the supposed twists and turns in the final half hour, or the coolth it clearly sees in violence committed by good cops.

  

Ab Tak Chhappan 2 is not a film worthy of hate or intense dislike. It just does not have much that’s new to offer. It’s hard to understand why this film needed to be made.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	106 minutes

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_Tak_Chhappan_2

REVIEW 319: QISSA: THE TALE OF A LONELY GHOST

Release date (India):	February 20, 2015
Director:	Anup Singh
Cast: Language:	Irrfan Khan, Tisca Chopra, Tillotama Shome, Rasika Dugal Punjabi (with English subtitles)

Qissa is a film of simmering intensity that at no point descends into high-decibel histrionics and screeching music. Great stories don’t require such crutches when drama is intrinsic to the situations they are relating to us and does not need to be hammered into our heads.

Anup Singh’s film is set in Partition-time Punjab but is imbued with a sense of timelessness that is almost tragic: it feels like it could well be happening in 2015.

This is the story of Umber Singh and his family who cross over into India to escape the violence dogging their people on the other side of the border. Umber is troubled by greater concerns than possible bloodshed though; he is hurting because his wife has given birth to three daughters in succession. He neither sees her pain at his atittude towards their girls, nor does he care. When the fourth daughter is born, Umber decides to bring her up as a son called Kanwar.

Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost then is about the craving for sons that is the curse of so many societies across the world and the manner in which that craving manifests itself in the subcontinent, but it is so much more. It is about gender confusion, about forbidden love, about being what you want to be, about daughters who are almost like figures unseen by their father in the house, about a ‘son’ whose reality is treated like a spectre to be ignored by his/her father and about the lengths to which human beings could go to keep their guilty secrets hidden.

Where the film is dealing with these issues, it is poignant and convincing. In the second half though, with the death of a character and the advent of a ghost, the tone changes as the narrative enters a realm where the metaphysical and the philosophical converge. Is the apparition intended to represent the ghost of patriarchy which continues to hover around the proceedings (as one of my friends insists) or the inner conflicts that continue to haunt Kanwar (my interpretation) even when life and love have in a sense liberated her/him? I can’t say. Unfortunately, this departure from the realistic nature of the preceding account makes a significant portion of the film too dense and robs it of some of its impact.

All is definitely not lost though because Qissa – a name that somehow implies folklore and legend – is at its very core a compelling tale enacted by a powerful cast.   

The formidable Irrfan Khan’s performance here is different from much of what we’ve seen him do before. He plays Umber with a deadpan face but a voice brimming with things left unsaid. One of my favourite scenes in Qissa has him grabbing his last child before his wife can see it and announcing the birth – at last – of a son. It is a chilling moment in which his demeanour reveals that he’s not just deceiving his spouse, he is determined to deceive himself too.

In an extremely challenging role that might have been overplayed by a lesser actor, Tillotama Shome is remarkable – and remarkably understated – as Kanwar. It’s hard to forget the despair in her voice when she asks her mother: why did you not protect me like you protected the others?

This is a film filled with good performances, yet there are two that stood out: one from a little-known youngster and another from an actress who gained a high profile with Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par in 2007. Tisca Chopra as Kanwar’s mother delivers a heartfelt performance that could touch even the most unfeeling among us. So does Rasika Dugal playing Neeli, who is married off to a woman she thinks is a man. Her striking screen presence and natural ease before the camera make her a performer to watch out for. That scene in which Neeli and Kanwar discuss their innermost feelings in a darkened room away from the vigilant Umber is one of the sweetest interactions between two women I’ve seen on the Indian screen, and it is what it is because of strong writing bolstered by lovely acting.

The other joy of watching Qissa is in listening to the Punjabi spoken so naturally by the film’s cast, not all of whom are Punjabis in real life. There is a lilt and cadence to their rendering of the language that is so pleasing to the ear, especially for those of us who are tired of the Punjabi stereotype that dominates contemporary Hindi cinema.

If you were to go by Bollywood portrayals, then you have to believe that all Punjabis, especially Sikh Punjabis, are loud, brash, boisterous, high-strung, easily-riled people who do the bhangra and say “Balle balle” at the drop of a hat. In fact, after Indian Christians who suffered persistent – and often harmful – stereotyping up to the 1990s (the community has virtually disappeared from Bollywood stories since that decade), the ones who have been most consistently targeted by Hindi film makers are Punjabis and Sikhs. Away from the silliness and lazy writing that too often rules mainstream Bollywood, comes this quiet multi-national co-production.

Qissa loses its way somewhat in the second half, but for the most part it hits the bull’s eye as a silent and desperate plea for the Kanwars of our world. This is a moving, well-acted film that compels us to think, and for that, thank you Mr Singh.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

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

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qissa

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