Bejoy Nambiar sure improves on his
earlier works. An ensemble that includes the like of Amitabh Bachchan and
Farhan Akhtar is sure to carry a degree of quality and style and those exactly
are the values that the film offers. Built around two principal characters that
are out to avenge the tragic death of their respective daughters they move with
sharp intelligence. The parallels with the game of chess are added for a
dramatic context. The mainstay of the tale in spite of a clear story line is
not so much the story as it is those who work to tell it on screen. The taut
tale told in less than two hours is fluent in movement and undemanding in
style. The film’s cinematographer (Sanu Vargese) and editing team (Vidhu Vinod
Chopra, Abhijat Joshi) keep the narration away from needless dramatics. In
retrospect that could well be its undoing for it finally ends up lacking the
required punch for a period of time to keep the viewer engaged and interested
for long.
The film starts with style. Danish Ali (Farhaan) is an army officer who loses
his daughter in a shootout with militants. He rushes where others would think
twice to tread. His colleague at work stand by him but his rush of blood robs
him of his job when he rushes and kills members of a militant group that has
arrived in Delhi to meet a political heavy weight in the capital. Danish’s wife
Roohana (a synthetic Aditi Rao) blames him for the death of the daughter. On a
rainy night at the crematorium mourning his dead daughter, Danish is introduced
to Pandit Omkarnath Dhar (Amitabh) who also suffers the death of his daughter.
However unlike Danish he takes things in his hands. He for some inexplicable
reason runs a chess campaign and is teaching kids the nuances of the game. He
introduces the game to Danish with profound statements that: the game gives you
another chance, life does not etc. The script now lays bare the fact that the
common enemy is the local Minister Qurieshi (Manav Kaur). It is seen that
Qureishi”s daughter (Mazel Vyas) is used as the token of peace in the valley by
the Minister while in Delhi he is the Mr Hyde willing to shoot people at will
and push them of stair cases the dimensional details of which are not lost on
the victim’s father. Pandit Omkar tutors Danish on the methodology to catch up
with the enemy. In the meanwhile we have a cameo from Wazir? (Neil Nitin) who
attacks Omkar and starts threatening the avengers, always a step ahead of them.
In case he is the secondary villain of the piece why does the film get named
after him? How and why is he the crux of the tale. That is Bejoy Nambiar
telling you the tale. Our cinema continues to be either tardy with tis content
or goes to the other extreme of placing style way ahead of content. Bijoy too
is guilty of the later. Where he wins his points is that the cast is near
perfect. Manav Kaur as the Minister is near perfect. He eschews the usual
cinematic potholes of interpreting our villains and is cool without being
needlessly dramatic or visibly evil. Amitabh for some strange reason has
decided to go the Gulshan Grover way of paying a lot of attention to costume to
narrate a character. He also invests in the character and gives it the
characteristic life that he is capable of. Not great but adequate enough and
given our cinema where character of that age have no cinematic space he gives
it credibility by his presence. Then there is Farhaan. He emotes with
consummate ease and shows how well he understands the media. As the enraged
father, the helpless one, the loosing husband, the intrigued student, he gets
all the shades of his character to near perfection. Neil Nithin as Wazir paradoxically
gets the most ill defined role and hams (obviously at the demands of the film
maker) his way through.
Amitabh’s career in a way has come a full circle From the morose angry
inspector in Zanjeer he now plays the role of the old man (a la Pran doing
Yaari hai imaan mere yaar mere zindagi ) now doing Atrangi Yaari. He tells his
young friend: Mein ek dost ko hasna sikha diya. Bijoy however just falls short
of making such a claim on his audience.
Rating : 2.5 stars
_ Energy and punch
+ performances and crew.