Madras Cafe would have easily become the
Blood Diamond of Indian Cinema if not for its few short comings. But let’s not
talk about them first. Let talk about the goodies and appreciate that:
1) The director and the
producer had the balls to make a movie on a very sensitive issue of LTTE and
Tamils. They have risked this project against a mindless Backlash from Tamils,
the most sensitive livings on this planet who won’t even tolerate a feather pointing at their culture and sentiments.
2) The film-makers dint give-in
to the commercial demands. They completely avoided Bollywoodization of their
movie, and did not rape the subject with item songs and fancy dance numbers.
3) John Abraham, the producer,
took the risk in investing in something that was not commercially viable &
yet maintained an authentic feel to the movie without making it a yet another
“Desh-Bhakti” movie with over-loaded lectures on Indian Patriotism. The Zeal to
do something different was evident in John Abraham, as it was in Vicky Donor.
An Indian movie, something about armed forces. What do you expect?
The obvious story of Indian Soldiers Battling in the mountains of Kashmir
against the obvious enemy, Pakistani army? Or the usual rescue of Indian
hostages and teach the terrorists a lesson type of movie? Along with a long
lecture of commander-in-chief to his boys before the final Battle, like
Shahrukh khan’s speech in ChakDe ? The cheap thrills of time bomb defusing when
we obviously know that the Hero is going cut the right wire? And the display of
Indian Flag and echoing of national Anthem & Vande Mataram every now and
then? This is the Bollywoodized version of a war movie in India.
But John Abraham is set out here to do something different. The film
makers choose a different subject and a neighbour entirely. And against the
culture of Bollywood, this story is a mixture of actual History with Fiction. Madras
Cafe is about the events that led to the assassination of the Rajiv Gandhi, and
the story of our hero John Abraham, his covert missions in Srilanka, how he
gets tangled in the Srilankan Politics while uncovering an assassination plot
of an EX-prime minister and eventually fails to stop the assassination (Yes dear Indian audience, we can’t change
the history, just to make our hero win). The names are changed for obvious
reasons we all know. The villain is Anna something (synonymous to Prabhakaran)
and is the leader of LTF (synonymous to LTTE). The historic details are laid
out at the start so there is no problem for people unaware of the Sri-Lankan
civil war.
What i enjoyed was, the authentic tone, the raw & gritty feel of
a military war movie, giving a complete idea of the conditions these soldiers
fight in. May be its the magic of that shaky Blood-Diamond style
cinematography, we get to see the some real-life military action, genuine
military tactics and manuovers and some gruesome guerrilla-combat. The camera
captures that harshness in the terrain of those lush green swamp lands, and
Amazon-like-dense forests and since all the action is set here, it is double
gritty and gruesome. There is a lot of blood spilled and some images are not
for the faint hearted. The second half really picks up the pace like an express
train and gives you no time to breathe. Crisp editing and an engrossing back
ground score take the thrill in the second half to a notch higher and leave you
spell-bound when the movie reaches its climax.
From the standard military tactics
to the tactics of guerrilla warfare, from the procedures followed by the
suicide bombers to the secret communication protocols followed by the Indian
Superiors & terrorists, an authenticity is maintained throughout the movie
and nothing in this aspect will sound artificial. The final scene, where the
bomb explodes & ex-PM is assassinated, leaves you speech-less in its impact.
Wonderfully made and executed, this scene works big time though you know how it
ends because, its edited so well that you feel like seeing something live of
what your father would have told you in few words about that fateful
assassination.
Here, our hero is not a fancy JAMES BOND type secret agent who
sleeps with sexy girls during a secret mission. He is a real man, has a real
wife, who has real worries. This relationship will make you feel sorry for all
the wives of the military men. The movie has underlying themes of political
conspiracy, War profiteering, and exploitation in a humanitarian crisis and
throws light of the devastation in the lives and infrastructure of the Lankan
people due to the war. It also manages questions the motives of war where
destruction reaches to a point where there is no one left to win.
But what makes this movie fall short from
likes of Blood Diamond or Black Hawk Down is the clumsy screenplay. The story
itself is narrated as a flashback and the writers here, could have found a
better excuse to tell the story than John Abraham confessing this story to some
father in the church. Why do you need a love-making scene a movie of this kind?
Its placement was absolutely redundant and blundered. Some of the acting was
quiet plastic to say the least. Especially Nargis Fakhri, whose character was
written only to insert a female role in this scheme for the movie’s sake. The
only important thing that Nargis Fakhri’s character, a British Journalist (with American accent), does is, provide
a piece of vital information. Before and after that, you have no idea what she
is doing in the movie. Majority of the scenes fade out abruptly every now then,
giving a dis-continuity feeling, as if this is a Quentin Tarantino movie
divided into chapters. The first-half is tiring to sit through. But as i said
earlier, let’s not talk about the short-comings.
Though you a get a “Something missing”
feeling after walking out of the theatre, Madras Cafe is worth-a-watch, at
least for the sincere effort of the director and producer. If still in a
dilemma to watch or not, just think of the “bollywood” movies you have in theatres
as alternatives right now. I hope you’ll be convinced enough.
