126 minutes of blood splashing
crudity in the name of entertainment is what filmmaker Nishant Kamat has for
you. Produced by Hunk King of Bollywood this script is a killer manual
prescribed for the anarchist. The film pushes the theories forward that to do
away with the guys on the wrong side of law you need to be there join them, and
beat them in their game by overdoing and over reaching their stratagems. As the
lyrics blare out: Yeh kya kiya khuda, yeh kyun kiya Khuda you
join in chorus and have the same questions to address. The directorial
signature is more in the nature of a confession at a weird take on what to
celebrate. It isn’t any longer a coincidence that a society that celebrates
violence gets it back in abundance. If we give it currency, it circulates. We
could be inspired by Korea and have the locales of Goa but what could be
missing is a serious call on whether this kind of cinema is entertaining. A top
star of mainstream cinema went to town recently claiming that cinema is not
meant to educate. True. It could however indoctrinate. It could lull the spirit
or dull it from human responses with such consistent exposure to degrading
human attacks. Art mirrors life, they say. So arguably a violent polity will
lap up with impunity violence of the third degree and even clap when the
protagonist goes about with it with aplomb.
Kabir Ahlawat (John Abraham) a Dangling Man from the army, an undercover, a do
good morose character loses his wife Rukshida (Shruti Hasan – the only pleasant
face in the film). He runs a pawn shop in a dark apartment in Goa where his
neighbour is a drug addicted single Mom Anna (Natalia Kaur). Anna’s little
daughter Naomi (Divya Chalwad of Choti Mooh Badi Baat fame) is around with airs
that could make Mala Sinha blush. On the other side of the law is Mantoo
assisted by two brothers – Kevin (Nishant himself) and Luke who is a halfwit
comedian. While Mantoo is into peddling drugs, the brothers who are initially
his supporters are also into organ selling and are into the crudest anatomatics
(mathematics with anatomy).
Goa deals with the divide between the bad and the worse and so we have drug
users vs. drug peddler vs. the cartels and the hapless police who obviously see
their Goa posting as some kind of a physical exercise to keep running on the
roads chasing the goons or witnessing high decibel gun shots. Leading this
posse is Sharad Kelkar who after playing the pleasant doctor on the small
screen has moved to playing the hard cop on big screen.
The Pawn shop morose guy takes a liking for the neighbourhood moppet and when
she is kidnapped by the multiple cartels he goes on a search. He has a torso
and a license to kill at will. He broods eternally that you would think Ajay
Devgn is Bertie Wooster in compare. So much so that at the end of the film the
little star asks him: tumhe smile karne aata hai handsome!! He goes about
killing people – stabbing them, literally forking them like you would do to
potatoes at the dictates of Sanjeev Kapoor. He kills people with knives with
the ease with which the guy at the theatre canteen uses it for smearing the
spread in a sandwich, he uses the pistol with the familiarity with which you
would use a water hose to water your plants in summer. In the midst of all this
mindless violence he earns the certificate of being the guy jo half ticket
kabhi kata nahi. After he is tired of all this, and sadly this is well well
after you are, he gives the final set of villains what he thinks they deserve
and what the filmmaker thinks will entertain the viewer.
The one positive part of all this is the sparse crowd that is willing to give
this outing a nod. The villain and incidentally the film maker keeps repeating
the dialogue “ghante ka mantoo” referring to a character in the
film. The expression may well apply to the entire film
Rating: 1 star
– Gory violence
+ Style.
L. Ravichander.