Director: Sriram Raghavan
Actors: Nawazuddin Siddique, Varun Dhawan, Kumud Mishra, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte
In one of the best opening sequences for an Hindi Movie, the movie’s chief antagonist Liaq and his ally rob a bank and flee by taking hostage a lady and a young child. Both the woman and the kid die and thus begins our protagonist Raghav’s road to revenge.
One of the best things about Badlapur is its actors. Just about everyone does their work brilliantly in the movie. It’s hard to find anyone who’s not performing well here. Nawazuddin still steels the show though. He’s miles ahead of every other actor in the movie and that’s when everyone’s doing a good job. He plays Liaq with great finesse, capturing the tiny details right. Nawazuddin gets the best lines too. Watch him taunt a fellow inmate about a trip to Bangkok during his short hiatus from the prison or His face off with Dhawan’s character Raghav, where he makes him realise the brutality of his revenge plan. (That scene is going to stay for a long long time with the viewers).
Varun Dhawan as Raghav is good, Dhawan plays his character with surprising ease, this being a completely new territory for him. Amongst others, Kumud Mishra has the pot bellied police officer is impressive (Reminded me of Mr. Plod from Noddy :) ) , Huma Qureshi plays here role with much aplomb, though short her character is extremely well written. The same applies for Radhika Apte’s, Ashwini Khalsekar’s and Zakir Hussain’s cameos, their screen time may be short but their performances leave a mark.
Badlapur does benefit from some extremely well written characters. Taking a leaf out of Mani Ratnum’s Raavan, Raghavan puts no one in black and white here. There are no completely evil or completely good characters. Every character has layers of depth to it. Every evil character has a somewhat good side to it and there’s a dash of evil in the good ones too. Liaq’s is perhaps the best written character in the movie. By the time the movie ends, it’s hard not to like “Liaq” and that’s partly because how well Liaq’s character is written and partly because of Nawazuddin’s acting prowess.
Despite the tone that Badlapur’s trailer sets, it isn’t an extremely violent movie. In fact, there’s a lot of good dark humour here. Raghavan’s judicious use of violence and humour in unexpected places, strikes an uncanny but good balance over here, making the movie extremely engaging.
Badlapur’s screenplay is highly gripping, there’s also a strong Johnny Gaddar echo here, which isn’t necessarily bad for Badlapur. Badlapur isn’t perfect though. It’s pace does slacken a bit post intermission but it’s only a minor hiccup in what is other wise a pretty great movie. Also, those looking for a violent and bloody revenge story will be slightly disappointed. However, Running at about 2 hours 20 minutes, there’s hardly ever a dull moment in Badlapur!
There’s isn’t much to dislike about Badlapur. It’s an exceptionally well made movie. It’s the best I’ve seen so far in 2015. Badlapur’s not a movie to be missed.
Rating: **** (Don’t miss this one! )
P.S. Don’t Miss the Beginning, Seriously don’t. Not only does it have an awesome opening sequence, the first 15 minutes of the movie are extremely crucial. If you miss them, you’ll have a hard time figuring out what’s going on, and you might not enjoy the movie to the fullest.
