MADRAS CAFE (My Review)

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.