Sunday, 14 September 2008

Movie Review- A Wednesday

Powered by: Chakpak.com A Wednesday ! 

I had thought of writing about this movie on the weekend and suddenly the bomb blasts of Delhi gave it a whole new significance. Why do we react strongly only when something happens at our doorsteps? And how do we define the proximity of disaster? Is the threshold of danger the border of my country or my city or my locality? The blasts of Bangalore and Ahemdabad were disconcerting but Delhi had us all in a spin. Why? My daughter is studying there and I have a number of friends and relatives there. My apathy was suddenly challenged. So am I a good & an aware citizen? What’s my contribution in stemming the rot that has set in the system? Who created the system anyway? The movie explores these stark facets of our daily lives.
Bollywood is finally waking up to the fact that realistic cinema can be both thought provoking and gripping. We can thank the noveau Multiplex culture for making this ideal commercially possible. The producers even had the guts of not permitting any songs in the movie! And the wonder of all is that the movie gets over and you realize you never missed the songs at all. Brilliant stuff!
The story is contemporary. Mumbai faces a threat of serial bombing if certain terrorists are not released. Anupam Kher & Naseeruddin Shah play the cop & the tormentor. Shah places the bombs at strategic locations and then starts communicating with the police using guile & state of art technology. The police react with alacrity & the game of cat and mouse begins culminating in a surprising climax. The forte of the movie is the slick editing which results in the unfolding of the events which are spaced within a seven hour frame at a breathtaking pace. There are no unnecessary emotional histrionics or loud claims of patriotism or religious fervor. People on both sides of the fence go about their jobs with clinical efficiency. They do it because it needs to be done.
Both Kher & Shah are powerhouses of talent which has been unleashed to devastating effect. Kher’s portrayal of a cerebral police officer is as telling as that of Aamir Khan in “Sarfarosh”. Shah is efficiency personified and then some. His seething anger is brilliantly restrained and the beautifully long justification of his actions threw me back to the era of Sohrab Modi movies where powerful dialogues swathed across a person’s consciousness. Jimmy Shergill hardly speaks thrice in the entire movie but his expressions & actions fully justify his role of an efficient if brutal officer. The only weak link in casting is the press reporter played by Deepal Shaw. She can’t talk and she can’t walk and her dialogue delivery was like raucous staccato. Baby Doll seems only good enough for titillating videos.
The movie forces the viewer to ask a lot of questions of him and any work, movie or otherwise, which succeeds in doing that has justified its existence. However it would be tragic if our concerns get diluted with time and daily routine.

1 comment:

keshav said...

yes it's a beautiful movie u r absolutely on mark
keshav