Madras Cafe (2013)
Rating 2.5/5.0
Madras Café is an attempt to analyze an event that shook the
Indian psyche – Rajiv Gandhi’s killing in 1991. Unfortunately, it falls short
and you’re left wondering if that is all there’s to it. When espionage,
conspiracy, twisted diplomacy, power politics and counter terrorism are your
subjects, it’s nearly impossible to take a simplistic, straight line approach to
storytelling – the film tries to do just that and fails miserably. It can be
that the director’s intention was to describe the RAW operation in Sri Lanka but that too seems marred by the script holding back from telling
the bare truth, instead preferring to tread a safe path that almost borders on subtle sycophancy.
Everyone lived out their fantasy in Madras Cafe except the
viewer. Piyush Pandey got to play Cabinet Secretary, Siddharth Basu the Head of
RAW, John Abraham a top Spy (knock yourself out with a heavy book before he
utters the momentously trite line "I couldn't save our Prime
Minister"), Nargis Fakrhi a war correspondent (she tries hard but ends
up looking like a class monitor who'll write your name on the blackboard if you
talk too much) and Shoojit Sircar a spy filmmaker. Everyone had fun except
me.
This is the definition of a cardboard film - cardboard characters,
cardboard actors, cardboard script, cardboard sycophancy. The only chap whose
character had some limited appeal was the hitherto unknown Prakash Belawadi who
plays RAW agent Bala Krishnan. Unfortunately for the viewer, Bala Krishnan
kills himself early on, apparently unable to take the stress of holding this
cardboard film together.
Lol.. Great review. I have to watch this movie for John Abraham uttering that line. ;)
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