This is definitely the New
Bollywood. Take me back to the 1960s please. To music and dance and romance
- trips to Switzerland and happy endings. Pure escapism. Not so much anymore.
This is fucking rough. No songs, no dancing, no romance. Just guts and pain.
And it is great. It deals with a subject matter that crawls into my brain
and just screams in rage. Child trafficking. But this can't be. It is starring
Rani Mukerji, soft and warm like a bun coming out of the oven. From the mid
90's to the mid-2000's she was my favorite Bollywood actress among that great
group that included Kajol, Preity Zinta, the Kapoor sisters, Manish Koirala,
Tabu and Urmila Matondkar. She has a million dollar smile and just grabs your
heart in films like Ghulam, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Nayak and a series of colorful
music busting at the seams romances. But this is the new Bollywood and
Rani was in her mid-30s when this was made and no longer sparkled like a
diamond in a glass case. The Mukerji family is one of the biggest in
the film business going back a few generations. Kajol is her cousin. She married
the son of Yash Chopra, so the old Bollywood is deep in her veins. But here
she is kicking the shit out of bad guys. Brutally. And enjoying it.
Rani plays Shivani Shivaji Roy, a tough but fair Inspector in the Mumbai
Police Force. Respected but not to be messed with. She comes across a group
of men smashing a café for promoting Valentine's Day and goes up to
the leader who smart-asses her. She starts reading him a list of laws that
he has broken and with each one slaps him across the face. Then lets him go
because arresting him would be pointless in the Indian justice system. She
lives with her brother and a niece whose parents have died. It is a cute family
unit. She has taken on a young beggar girl as a friend and had her placed
in an orphanage. When Pyaari goes missing, she looks for her and concludes
that she has been abducted for child prostitution. She is right and the scenes
of the girls in prison, being prettied up and served to customers is horrific
because you know this really happens. You want to reach through the screen
and strangle the pimps and customers.
With her small group of men, she begins to track them down. Picks up one
suspect who is then shot in the head from a motorcycle to shut him up and
Rani gives chase on foot delivering a kung fu kick to bring him down. He then
is killed too. She keeps digging. A young hotshot (Tahir Raj Bhasin) who
runs the stealing and shipping out of the girls begins to call her up - first
to try and bribe her, then warn her, then a finger arrives in the post. She
tells him he has 30 days to live. This reeks of realism - the street scenes
packed with traffic, the dingy apartments, the uncaring police, the cocktail
parties for the wealthy men with the young girls up for grabs. Rani is great
eschewing the glamor that made her a star - still beautiful with those greenish-gray
eyes of hers - but dressed down. The final scene will warm the cockles of
your revengeful heart. There is a Mardaani 2.
