Maximum Review

The film ends with a young girl tying up her shoe laces. She has just been an eye witness to the shoot out in which her father is involved. The train moves on and she lives to see another day. Is this hope? Resignation? Complete surrender?
One way to look at Kabeer Kaushik’s Maximum is to see it as a cynical lens caressing the law and order agency and how determinably corrupt it has become over the years. Police postings, ego clashes of small men who occupy high places, personal whims getting the better of public requirements all and more tell the sordid tale of the state of affairs. It rings true in the state where people have been a witness to some high level political drama in the law enforcing department. It is clear that we as a system are cracking and not just that we are letting go the fertile imagination of our film makers.
Viewed from the context of cinema, it is irksome to believe that we have come to societal celebration of violence. Look at the window in the past few weeks alone and the trail of violence, gun shots, blood and death is all over the place in the name of good, bad, commercial, Avant-Garde cinema. Every kind of film maker finds this a comfortable zone and this should worry the historian, the sociologist. We need to take stock of this disturbing happening in a collective that prides itself as the land of peace Buddha and the Mahatma.
The story line of Maximum is about two police officers Inamdar (Naseerudin Shah) and his many years junior Pratap Pandit (Sonu Sood). Both trigger happy and ego driven speak through the official gun and are willing to break every rule in the book. They are encounter specialists operating in Mumbai. While at one level it is simple to identify the CID classic aie dil hai mushkil jeena yahan playing in the backdrop, it is naïve to believe that this is Mumbai centric social malady. Even worse is the tendency to praise or celebrate it. The script is only about how the two use and are used by other men and institutions and how in the long run all are dead.
With an apology of a story line the script is filled with shoot outs and dark dens (even police stations and ministerial hang outs). We have the usual political interference and the intrigue among two privately warring and publicly hugging politicians (Mohan Agashe and Vinay Pathak). The other characters in the script are mere pops who come in to fill space and add variety in what is designed as middle stream cinema.
Cops in every of their varying avtaars, have been done and done to death by Bollywood and so you would have thought. The film maker revisits the premise and ends up grazing with an insiders take on the department. Built on the axis of the brewing conflict between the two warring police officers backed up their respective interests in the department, the film navigates through reels and reels of story less incident filled stylized shots. It is perhaps in keeping with the current trend of style over content. The resultant product is often confusing and even weary to follow.
The film however has its recommendatory moments. The crew back up the lack of script with some crisp editing and fine cinematography (Krishna Ramanan). Of the cast Naseer is wasted and has no screen space to develop the character he is playing. Rajendra Gupta, Arya Babar, Neha Dhupia, Vinay Pathak all bring in a degree of credibility to their roles but stop short of infusing the required flesh to the characters. Sonu Sood is truly the main stay of the film. In a role where he is called upon to lead, he delivers and his performance is punch filled. Interesting to see a brooding police officer pushing the Vijay stereotype even after three and half decades since Big B did Zanjeer.
It is indeed tiring to, week after week, go through political intrigue and gun shots in the name of entertainment. We need to revisit our premise. Culturally, socially.

L. Ravichander.