The presence of Jimmy Shergill and
Sanjay Mishra impelled me to the theatres. Good actors are often undone not
just by the bizarre working of the market forces and therefore their career but
also their choices. Probably the paradox that works in a vicious circle for
them is that they get bad films and thus remain where they are and they are
there because of the films they get. Director Jasbir Bhaati does singular dis
service to such huge talent with such poorly etched roles that the actors are
better off without this kind of cinema.
The major problem with the film is that the film maker starts off with an
innocuous comedy based on school life (with over aged kids – all in their
twenties going to school!!) and later navigates the film to a pompous take on
rape and how the judicial system handles it. Yet again we have a self-defeatist
solution by propagating the theory that lawlessness can only be dealt with
anarchical measures and that the legal alternative is not a choice.
Five good-for-nothing school kids flexing their muscle in the local area
because their parents are powerful: Ram Pratap (Vikrant Rai), Anil Sharma
(Rohan Mehra), Deen Bhandu (Bhupinder Singh), Vikram Tyagi (Lavin Gothi) and
Salman Khan (Mohit Bhagel) are packed off to a residential school in the city
in the hope that the English medium school will impact their future better.
Instead they ogle at anything in a skirt or a saree, keep behaving like
juvenile delinquents and justify the harsh punishments at school that has
completely lost touch with contemporary academics and is caught in a
refrigerated idea of how schools run. It is here that they have for a school
principal the highly talented Rajit Kapoor who too, like the other talented actors
falls a prey to a dubious script and makes faces in the name of acting out the
role of a sensitive Principal and a traumatic dad.
In the later part of the film the tricks and games of the guys and gals having
fun and frolic turns sharply to a case where the Principal’s elder daughter is
gang raped. Three of the five, that is excluding Deen and Salman are implicated
in the murder even as they are involved in the rescue of the girl. Even as the
victim battles for life, the court drama with Parikshit Sahani as the judge
goes on in an inane manner. Stepping in to fight the cause of the group is
lawyer Jayashri (Archana Puran Singh- for once sober), SP Tejaveer Singh (Jimmy
Shergill) is in charge of the investigation and you smell a rat from the
dubious manner in which he stares and walks as if he is out there more for the
camera than for the script.
It is a film that has keep away written all over it. It is sad to state that a
film maker has in his team the likes of Om Puri and Jimmy Shergill and yet pans
out a tame affair. In fact while at least Om Puri manages to escape with a role
that does not require anything of him and keeps is repute and dignity intact,
poor Jimmy Shergill is given a role as starched as his uniform and he suffers
from having to play a character that is lost in its lack of credibility. There
is no point in assessing any of the new comers who constitute the five couples
– for that would add credibility to their presence. The one noteworthy guy is
Mohit Bhagel who plays Salman and is the humour element. Any innovation or
imagination in the film is restricted to its title.
Rating: 1.5 stars
+ hardly anything
– Crass and confused.
L. Ravichander.