Movie Review – Badlapur

Back home it’s called Raghavan thriller

Oh, how long this movie had been in my watchlist. Thanks to the one song ‘Jeena Jeena’, I tried to postpone it to the best possible time to watch. What beautiful rendition by Atif Aslam. That too if you see him singing, you’ll just get melted away. I thought this movie would be on the lines of ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’. I guess I got carried away by the name, I thought the movie would be raw and rustic rural subject with lot of guns and violence. Guns and violence were there alright but in a different way.

The movie won me over right at scene one. How elaborately that scene was made. It was the time I was erasing my preconceived notions about the film, that it would be a rural film, so when I was getting basked in the city life and observing everyday happenings in a road, as if like a by passer, suddenly a robbery happens. The robbers escape in a car which a lady and her kid were about to go. In the next scene they both die. Suddenness, have never been shown in a much better way. The film was terrific just for this one scene. A lot of thing happen and it’s all sudden. When we were casually experiencing the mundane life, the happenings happen all of a sudden. It’s like accident, you never know that it’s happening until it happens to you. How brilliant is that.

From there it’s all Nawaz bhai’s show. Probably his finest till date, yeah even better than Gangs of Wasseypur. I wonder why this film wasn’t seen by as many as I thought it’d be. It’s not really a slow film to be missed. It’s a top-notch thriller which will work for people who even casually watch movies. It’s a film which should work for anyone.

Raghu (Varun Dhawan) carefully plots revenge for the people who had killed his family. I thought the movie would take a different direction when Liak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) gets jailed. He tries various antics to escape and finally gets cancer. The period in which he remains in jail is best exhibition of acting. I wonder how the movie was narrated to him and how he absorbed it. That’s what good actors can do to a great script. The whole part was excellent. It’s impossible to watch his scenes without developing hatred for him.

Varun Dhawan does a decent job too, something I didn’t expect from him. But still he was not at home like how he was for the rom coms like ‘Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania’ or ‘Badrinath Ki Dulhania’. Both Alia and Varun felt like they were made for those roles. In spite of that he still does a fabulous job. His anger didn’t work for him but when he controls and acts subdued, the sequences before the final kill, those things worked. For example, the scene with Radhika Apte in car and the date with lawyer, those scenes were brilliant. It gave time to see through a killer, the calmness before storm. That too without being heroic. It was brilliant.

For a film which makes us hate the antagonist so much, his love angle still works. Liak and  Jhimli (Huma Qureshi) make a terrific pair, who make us sympathize with them. When Raghu tortures Jhimli by making out with her, we feel that it’s the best sort of revenge but still get a weird feeling as to who is crueler, Liak or Raghu. But how can Raghu let everyone go when his close aides are killed. Those psychologically affecting scenes were brilliant.

Of all the characters I felt bad for Liak’s mother who doesn’t know the happenings but wants Liak to be free. What a terrific actor Pratima Kazmi is, who could make us feel sad just by looking at her. And of course, there is our treasure trove Radhika Apte as Koko. How could she be so sexy in everything she does. One who looks like a seductress in her first scene becomes completely vulnerable in the scene where she strips. Wonder what makes her such a complete actress. What a woman!

The film as such is a great film but it reaches new level because of the climax. For some reason Liak knows that he’s doomed and goes to jail and eventually dies there too. It’s now not a question of revenge, who gets to find a revenge in a better way is the question. Liak definitely doesn’t win but leaves Raghu with an incomplete feel too. Raghu think that he’s the one dictating terms when he lets off Liak without killing but Liak takes that too from him. Now it becomes a curious subject, at last who really is satisfied.

What a great filmmaker Sriram Raghavan is.