Monsoon Shootout Hindi Movie
With the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati in the limbo, there is a gigantic gap in Hindi film releases. That's why films like Fukrey Returns (last week) and now this film have found a competition free release.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui stars in the film and he can do nothing to save this Film School Graduation type film where everything and everybody is trying too hard to make the script work. Or not.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui gets to play the ax murderer. His actions are always, always parallel to fisherwomen chopping fish heads off. Done to impress the audience, we assume.
Neeraj Kabi gets to play the cynical cop Khan who lets crooks free and when they run, shoot them dead. The director of course has never seen that happen in aa Hindi film, ever. Sigh.
Tannishta Chatterji gets to play a role of a poor woman suffering from injustice yet again (she is the ax murderer's wife who knows nothing about her husband's work, she just gets slapped around by him).
Rookie cop Vijay Verma is so inspired by his dead dad's 'seekh' he hesitates and he hesitates to shoot a criminal that you wish to enter the story and pull the trigger for him.
There's a doctor girlfriend to rookie cop who is luminescent (Gitanjali Ramakrishna), but her role has been created so she can bandage the chap who keeps getting hurt.
There is a bad sleazy cop, an ugly topless don (who exists to do kushti in a buffalo barn and watch bar girls dance when he's not making deals with a bad politician). There's bar girl with a heart of gold. There's the ax murderer's kid who takes his dad's place in the bad guy universe. There's also some nasty rain because crime happens only in the monsoons...
No, no, no! These are not a bunch of cliches at all!
What is worse is that the story looks pre-cellphone era. The rookie cop asks the doc out on a date. She waits patiently at a church (to look beautiful with all that candlelight), while he's taken away by Khan on an assignment. They don't text each other?
The three choices of whether to shoot the criminal dead or no seem to be so juvenile, when during one option the bad guy shoot the rookie cop dead, you smother the desire to clap. The film is tedious and boring. The director Amit Kumar has made a similar meat chopping intercut with hand chopping short film called Bypass which is a tad more interesting. Skip this feature film.