Truth and Dare
Film: Madras Cafe
Cast: John Abraham, Siddharth Basu, Nargis Fakhri
Directed by: Shoojit Sircar
Duration: 2 hrs 10 mins
Rating: * * * 1 / 2
To put it plainly, Madras
Cafe raises the bar for commercial Hindi cinema. Firstly, films that mix
fiction and reality are an extreme rarity in Bollywood and equally rare is a no
nonsense approach in making it. There are no item numbers (heck there are no
songs either), no juvenile gags and no melodrama, yet Madras Cafe grabs your attention right from the word go. Recently
we had Nikhil Advani’s D-Day which
was a brave and commendable effort and this time it is Shoojit Sircar who has
pulled it off in good style.
Some might complain that the way the film is structured it
may not be easy to follow especially in the initial parts where the foundation
is laid. The reasons for that is, one, you have to be super attentive and two,
there is usually way too much spoon feeding in most of our films.
A spy thriller would be an apt way to describe the film which
has elements of reality. The names have been changed perhaps keeping the
sensitive issue in mind but anyone who has elementary knowledge of India in the
90’s can easily figure out that LTF is a name for LTTE, Anna is Prabhakaran
their leader and the ex-prime minister referred to is Rajiv Gandhi.
John Abraham plays Vikram,Singh, his wife thinks he is in
the army but actually he is a spy working for RAW. The story is told in
flashback when there was a major crisis in Sri Lanka in the late 80’s. Agent Vikram
is sent to Jaffna
where he has to deal with a rather non-cooperative boss (Prakash Belawadi) and
gradually he discovers that there is a sinister plan being hatched, to
assassinate the ex-PM.
There are several characters in the periphery – quiz master
turned television show producer Siddharth Basu plays the Vikrams boss in Delhi, Narghis Fakri is a London based journalist who is covering the
war (mercifully she doesn’t speak Hindi) and tv journalist Dibang is also seen
in a cameo as the plot thickens.
Since this is not Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, you know
how the film is going to end. There is double crossing and all that and it even
suggests that there was a larger international conspiracy involving the LTTE.
As for the politics of the whole issue let’s just say there
are two sides to every story and leave it at that.
Slickly shot and edited, technically Madras Café is an accomplished film. Even though there are no
songs, the background score makes an impact. Some of the dialogues initially
seem to be a bit out of place – for instance English words like concern, express and intervene are all used in one sentence
which is primarily meant to be in Hindi.
Hats off to the supporting cast - Ajay Ratnam as the
Prabhakaran look alike, Prakash Belawadi as the forever drinking boss and
Siddharth Basu also throws up a surprise in his role. Nargis Fakhri does much
better than what she did in Rockstar.
John Abraham’s acting capabilities are very limited to put it politely but to
be fair, he has done a decent job in the lead role. As a producer he fares much
better and Madras Café is a taut
thriller you don’t want to miss.
www.twitter.com/sachinchatte
No comments:
Post a Comment