Got served the sour, harsh & perfect food at Madras Café. Throughout the movie, however much the makers impress on the fact – “This is a work of fiction blah blah blah & any reference to any living/dead person is purely coincidental blah blah blah”, there are glaring, if not pointing, references to glorified individuals of the country & its neighbour. The movie is a blast from the past during the Peace Keeping Force’s intervention of the Sri Lankan Civil war & the resulting consequences. The movie begins with a completely scrawny & drunken Abraham channelizing his thoughts on being drunk & how a smartly convened covert operation nearly saved, yes, saved a controversial yet a performing leader of the country. Whilst relating to his thoughts & horrifying experiences, he shares the truth behind the saga with a church priest. And therein begins pandemonium. The movie brushes a little background story on JA and his better half, his diversion from the army to R&AW, entry into Sri Lanka, coming face to face with office politics including his arrogant, power-hungry and traitor boss, taking help & interacting with the smart foreign journalist, making inroads with the Rebel Group (a.k.a. Tigers) into the bylanes of Jaffna sprawling with corpses & getting caught & bludgeoned by the Tigers. The entire story is narrated by JA himself with a hollow, deep & scarred voice – giving an underlying meaning to the nearly silent acting performance by the man. His agony on losing his comrade & his wife, his frustration on being pinned on the mat by his boss, his nerve-wracking leadership skills & his sadness on not being able to save the targeted individual despite being 10 feet away from him. This is by far, JA’s best performance – maturity of an actor comes with dedication, seriousness & natural entry into the role. He’s done it this time. The best scene – he narrates a poem from Tagore’s collection at the end which made him realize about priorities of life & passion. Though JA blazes the screen with his extremely simple, quiet performance, Siddhartha Basu is outstanding as the director of R&AW and will leave you spellbound with his mannerisms, his vision & his forcefulness in the decision-making scenario. As JA’s boss, Prakash Belawadi plays the sensational mole, backbiting with super-ease & drinking away to glory. Nargis Fakhri, for a change, looks better with her part as the journalist trying to expose the truth behind the saga. Ajay Rathnam plays the ruthless Tiger leader with a certain calmness and depicting the character’s actual line of thoughts. A huge plus for the movie is the pace – rapid, edgy & not taking off the runway even for a single second. The cinematography is raw & will leave you saddened at the losses incurred from all the sides – on the better side, it captures Sri Lanka candidly yet beautifully. The screenplay is excellent, arranging the pieces of the puzzle slowly and dragging them in one stroke and smashing them into the right place at the end. Shoojit Sircar has again amazed with his vision & attention to every detail. Though the title depicts the location where the assassination plan was hatched – it echoes the sentiments of the Tamils displaced due to the excruciating civil war, the after-effect & the ultimate rejection. A hard-hitting realistic piece – Vicky Donor was just the tip of the iceberg, JA knows & defines production now.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 12:29:55 +0000
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