Cast: John Abraham, Nargis Fakhri, Siddharth Basu
Director: Shoojit Sircar
Rating: Two and a half stars
For sure, it’s informative, edifying and bravely devoid of nudges and winks to formulaic entertainment. No gratuitous elements of hippy-hoppy shakes, treacly romance, full throttle melodrama, or even a dhak or two dhaks of romance out here. Moreover, the violence – ingrained to the subject – is kept under control, using black-and-white photographs and snappily edited footage of carnage in the time of insurrection.
Director Shoojit Sircar’s 'Madras Café' – a docudrama, albeit marketed as a spy thriller – deserves credit for striking out in the right direction. Of course, in cinema as in life, good intentions are only good for paving stones on the most ominous of speedways. Alas, the exposition of the civil war in Sri Lanka during the 1980s, and the 1991 assassination of the ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, tends to get too dense and confusing structurally. There are far too many rewinds (including a flashback within flashbacks, which destructs scripting grammar), a plethora of locations, dates to keep count of. Plus, the supporting ensemble characters – particularly of the ‘LTF’ rebels – are rigidly one-dimensional.
Also, quite a few of the shot takings are much too flashy and quick, straight out of ad films. Indeed, slickness of the derivative kind subtracts from the film’s theme. Take the pretty shot, then, of helicopters silhouetted against the huge obelisk of an orange sun, which seems to be stock footage acquired from the Bruce Willis war zone flick 'Tears of the Sun'.
More worries: There is a discussion on fighting the System, which sounds strong initially, but peters out into nothingness. Eventually, the point that Sircar seeks to make is that Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination could have been prevented if it weren’t for New Delhi’s uptight bureaucracy. Now that’s another story by itself.
And when the script comes to grips with that aspect of the plot during the last 15 minutes, Sircar finally hits a boundary. Edge-of-the-seat suspense is whipped up. Piquantly, although all of us already know the outcome of the assassination attempt, we still hope-against-hope that it won’t happen.
To get there, Sircar begins his political tract with Indian cinema’s current obsession – the long and winding flashback, in this case a narration by a very hirsute, depressed-looking man to a priest in a hilltown. Like the government emissary travelling to meet the champ in 'Bhaag Milkha Bhaag', the priest is all ears and benign smiles. Commences the story of the now-unshaven, special military officer Vikram Singh (John Abraham). A peacekeeping mission by India has failed. So, he is assigned to go undercover and tackle the militants in Sri Lanka. He’s all set, tough as nails.
On landing there, officer Vikram encounters war correspondent Jaya (Nargis Fakhri), from the U.K., role-modelled after Anita Pratap (Barkha Dutt wasn’t around then, presumably). Next: Vikram meets informers, moles and a horde of nasty folk with dodgy political agendas. In a shoot-out, he’s injured, and returns to base to be embraced by his petulant wife (Rashi Khanna). But you know how it is.
Vikram must return to the killing fields. For starters, he strikes a more harmonious equation with Correspondent Jayaji. Mercifully, no flirting-taking-off-shirting here. Concurrently, alas, too many cooks are about to spoil the curry. There are repetitive cuts to a conspiracy being hatched in Singapore’s Madras Café, the rebels are inscrutable, and at long last, the camera moves into the preparation techiqniques for the ‘human bomb.’
For a large part of its length, the Café like it or not, is so convoluted that your eyes may start drooping and your mind may switch off with the information overload.
Clearly, Sircar’s debut-making 'Yahaan' – dealing with strife in the Kashmir Valley -- was more involving, emotional and accessible. This time, the gifted director never loosens up. And you wonder, why the pedagoguish approach?
The outcome is technically polished, particularly in its crisp sound design and Kanwaljeet Negli’s athletic camerawork, but the editing pattern is much too restless and overuses fade-outs.
Of the acting crew, TV personality Siddhartha Basu as the supportive RAW officer is impressive. But why on earth was ad personality Piyush Pandey hanging around the fringes? Nargis Fakhri, in her Euro-accent, tends to play her role on one note – strictly sombre.
Come to think of it, no one ever smiles, least of all John Abraham. He is restrained with a twist of sobriety throughout, for which he does deserve a thumbs up. And another one for producing a picture which at the very least, tries to do the right thing. If only, it wasn’t so, stubbornly heavy duty!
Bottomline: Well-intentioned, but monotonous
