Another Award-worthy Aamir!

By now, you must have come across at least one glowing review of this movie that's come out of nowhere to be released on the same day as that over-hyped Bachchan family vehicle, and impressed almost everyone. I'll do my bit in inspiring you to go and watch it at one of the few shows available at the multiplex in your town.

Aamir, as you should know by now, is about this London-returned doctor, who finds his world completely turned over the day he lands in Mumbai to meet his family - mother, three sisters and a younger brother. The day starts off badly and goes downhill in the scariest of ways. All thanks to these instructions being given to him by a person we know nothing about, except that he has kidnapped Aamir's family and is a Muslim fundamentalist.

The movie is a little under one-and-a-half hours long, without any breaks for songs. There are three brilliantly executed songs that move along with the regular story though. Thankfully. Too many decent thrillers die a sad death when accompanied by speed-breaker songs.

Another thing that a fast-paced thriller can benefit tremendously from is a good background score. And Aamir has one of the most eclectic, and effective, mix of sounds I have heard in a Hindi movie for a long time. This soundtrack appears even more competent when compared to Sarkaar Raj, which I am told is only marginally better than the farce that was Sarkaar's score.

Apart from Rajeev Khandelwal, and a not-so-well-known actor called Gajraj Rao, I didn't see too many familiar faces in the film. I haven't seen much of Khandelwal's work on TV before this, except a couple of episodes of his game show and a part of an episode from Left-Right-Left. I know he was a big star on TV, and among the few good actors to have come out of Ekta Kapoor's empire, but not much beyond that. For about two-thirds of the movie, if not more, you will have Khandelwal's close-ups on the screen. One needs to be fairly competent to carry that off and still keep the film interesting. Khandelwal has oodles of this curious thing called 'screen presence' and yet at the same time appears to be this common man hit with this calamity one random day. There are two-three other actors with minor roles here who you might have seen in bit-roles on TV or in movies earlier, but this general lack of familiarity lends a greater degree of efficacy to the environs that the film is mostly set in.

Which brings me to the biggest asset that this film has. It stinks. Not quite in the same way as Tashan, or many other duds, did, but in a good way. Watching it from my comfortable seat in the air-conditioned, perfumed, audi at Fame's multiplex, I could still imagine Aamir's disgust when he was made to go into the 'sandaas' of a chawl to look for a clue. It was me bringing out my breakfast when he did. I don't know how the director - Raj Kumar Gupta, take a bow - did it, or maybe the credit goes to the cinematographer or the art-director, but the sweat, blood or aroma (in case of biryani and an oily mutton curry) permeates through the screen. Who needs Odorama when you have this?

The story got a little too dramatic towards the end, and I felt a little unhappy the way it ended. But, I tried coming up with a better ending, as I normally try to in such cases, and I realized that the alternative(s) would not have been suited to the kind of person Aamir had come across as for the entire movie.

But, of course, all these are just auxiliary elements aiding the fundamental idea behind the movie, which tries to compare two kinds of Muslims - one who is all-too convinced of the unfair hand dealt to all members of the community in India and believes that the only way to right this historic wrong is to kill innocent people, and the other who believes that no matter where you come from, our country, unlike many Islamic countries (this one's my addition), gives you the chance to move up and ahead in life only if you are willing to grab this chance and work hard. And how often the former minority overshadows the latter majority. Gupta does well by not dwelling too much on arguing for either character, and just shows things the way they are. Which, unfortunately, does prove to some extent that a large part of the Muslim community is living in inhuman conditions, without drawing any conclusions as to who is to blame for this.

We have seen several movies in the last few years about related issues, but I can't think of a better made one than this. Anurag Kashyap would be proud of his one-time assistant.

There's a scene where Rao's character is trying to make a toy monkey play the drum after keying it in. The monkey stops after every couple of movements, and he has to keep hitting its head to make it go again. After a while he gets irritated and just pushes it down on its face. Just as he has to keep pushing the conscientious doctor on the other side of the phone, who stops every once in a while, with a hit on his head by reminding him that his family's fate hangs in the balance. We just wait with bated breath when the final push comes. It does.