Rustom
 
      
Director: Dharmendra Suresh Desai
Year:  2016
Music: Various
Duration:  148 minutes
Rating: 6.0
An unexpectedly decent court room drama that had me up till 3am when I had only planned on watching only 30 minutes of it. Not that it is incredibly riveting, but good enough to keep you guessing and kept me going. Or maybe I just could not sleep. Not being familiar with the Indian judicial system I can't say whether it was accurately portrayed or is it the Bollywood Judicial System. I have seen a few other Bollywood films set in the court room and they are over the top melodramas with big speeches and accusations thrown around like lemon pies. This was much more sedate and serious and yet I still have to wonder - do wives have to testify against their husbands, does the person on trial have to testify, if a witness admits that the prosecuting lawyer asked him to lie can that lawyer continue the case and not be disbarred, can the judge throw a reporter into jail for a story in the newspaper and is it only a majority vote among the nine person jury that convicts or frees a person. Because that all happens here. I will have to read up at some point.




Of course this is set in 1958 so perhaps things have changed. They do a reasonably nice job of creating the feel of the late 50's primarily with the use of old cars and older buildings. It feels like it might have been easier to change a few things in the plot and set it in contemporary times and not have to worry about hiding modern contraptions. But somewhere I read that it is vaguely based on a real event. I would have to stress vaguely.



At the center of all this is Rustom (Akshay Kumar) who plays a naval officer with a deep sense of loyalty to the navy. And a seemingly strict moral code that may be more flexible than is initially apparent. His ship has been at sea for months and gets orders to come back to Bombay as it was still called a few days early. He rushes home to see his lovely wife Cynthia (Ileana D'Cruz - just seen in Barfi) who should be waiting for him with open arms. But she isn't. She hasn't been home for two days. He finds not very well hidden love letters to her from his friend Vikram (Arjan Bajwa). Oops. You have to hide those letters better than that. She is fooling around with another man. Those lonely nights. And he is loaded to the gills with money and a sleazy charm.



So Rustom does what any man would - gets a gun from the Navy and goes to Vikram's home and shoots him three times in the heart. And then turns himself in. Case closed. Well, not really. For one thing we don't see the actual killing - we just hear the shots and the dead body. There is also something very fishy going on in the navy. They want something Rustom has. Very badly. Nothing is necessarily what it seems and Rustom becomes his own lawyer. Cynthia gets to look very sad throughout but she is still so damn cute, the Police Inspector played by Pawan Malhotra senses he is being played by Rustom but doesn't know how and Esha Gupta as Vikram's sister looking for a death sentence is so wickedly nasty and beautiful with a constant look on her face as if her hairdresser had cancelled their appointment. She is so perfectly disdainful that she is in danger of being stereotyped in those roles.




Whether any of the film makes sense is questionable but while watching you just go along with it because that is what we do as an audience. Kumar plays this like a lamppost - stiff and straight - kind of boring - none of his usual humor or action - but looking good in his navy uniform. Butthat awful moustache that he grew after marriage - no wonder she fooled around - blame the moustache. It was a big hit, won a bunch of awards and Akshay auctioned off his uniform after the film which did not please the navy and feels kind of tacky. Hopefully, for charity.