Badlapur, 2015 — ★★★½
I had thought, after the Student Of The Year there was a new generation of Masala. Films churning out the same content, albeit a little more polished with new technology. I am happy to admit that I was wrong. Alia did Highway. Siddharth did Ek Villain. And Varun, after moronic titles like Mein Tera Hero and Humpty Sharma, did this. Bollywood is changing and new leads have what it takes to be comfortable and confident in not measuring their worth in the screen time they get.
Badlapur is a story of a man who loses everything in a bank robbery went wrong. It is the story of how he patiently takes revenge. The movie is dark, gripping and has some truly amazing moments.
The director Sriram Raghavan handles his cast and camera well. His earlier movie in the similar genre was Johhny Gaddar. He has a knack of keeping people on a real plane. You do not have Singhams and Chulbul Pandeys here. The story is believable for the most part and questioning in the remaining one. Both the leads share screen time and even then they are not given so much importance that they would rise beyond the setting. It is only possible to do so when you have relatively new people who do not bring a lot of screen clout with them. You can not cast someone like SRK, Salman in roles like this. They bring a lot of glamor in the story which does not have any room for it. Hence, the choice of cast is especially appreciable.
The chosen ones, who deliver. Varun Dhawan has shown remarkable screen presence in this movie. Almost as much as you’ll forgive him for being Humpty Sharma a while ago. He shows dark tones of his repressed anger well. You can almost feel him controlling his anger while interacting with certain people, that is worth a praise. Yet Nawazuddin Siddiqui is the man who would impress you the most. He shows his caliber when roles demand a lot from him. The roles like the villain from Kick are too easy to for him to break a sweat. He flourishes in characters in a natural setting, like Lunchbox or Liak from Badlapur. He has shown a character transformation with supreme subtlety while maintaining a carefree semblance. He creates a believable, helpless, angry yet thoughtful Liak for you that you can’t forget even when you walk out of the movie.
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I am being repetitive when I again talk about natural, realistic setting. The complete story happens in and around Pune, with some scenes in Mumbai. Even the background music remains firmly rooted in the narrative. Be it Marathi song, ‘Ye Re Ghana’ being used as a fantastic background or seeing Varun’s in-laws talking in a language other than Hindi. The film needs no subtitles for such scenes assuming the audience will understand the intent sans the literal meaning of what is said. This is important. We need more films which fuse well with the way our society functions. I appreciate the film for being just casual about it and allowing such natural setting to be part of the narration so smoothly.
We had enough instances of a leads singing Sufi songs when sad and singing Punjabi songs when happy. These things do not fit together in any realist setting.
Having said that, I also feel the film to be a tab bit slow. It is one of those instances when the trailer leaves you expecting something different from what you actually see when you enter the theater. Had they improved on the pace, they could have added more elements in the story. It appeared stretched a little too much for comfort. Something more would have made it tight. Those moments when I had a look around in theaters or had a quick word with my friend would have been avoided.
I heard a lot of people criticizing the end. They might be right in believing it to be an out and out revenge tale. The trailer does give only that perception. The ending makes it a more thoughtful and it is one of the best parts of this film. They could have handled it little better, but the message they wanted to give is loud and clear. I heard reactions of the audience of being deceived or of being deprived of that raw pleasure. However, I guess the movie set out to give exactly that message. The long uncomfortable shots of his life precisely give you that impression. That has worked really well.
These are the movies I am glad about. The new generation in Bollywood is giving me ample reasons to be happy and hopeful. When someone openly curses Bollywood for its habit of making Student of the Year, year after year, I would love to have a few arrows in my quiver to shoot back. These arrows are not yet perfect, but the audience is gravitating towards them. It also crosses the argument that bad movies are a result of popular demand. Still we have movies like Humshakals raking crores, but the success of Badlapur and probably of NH10 coming next week, tells me, that there is value in investing off the beaten path. There is hope that more and more of such will keep coming.
