Movie Review: Mardaani

Cast: Rani Mukerji
Director: Pradeep Sarkar

The best films consist of a perfect balance between logic and emotion. It should be smart enough to engage your intelligence and dramatic enough to tug at your heart strings. Mardaani is somewhere in the middle but slightly off centre. Its emotional bits outweigh its cinematic intelligence marginally. But even then it retains a sense of dexterity. It allows its protagonist to hit home an emotional hit. It’s engaging to see a woman out play a man at his own game. A nice dent in the male ego.

What’s new about Mardaani is that it puts a lady in the shoes of a classic movie hero. She’s quite literally the Dirty Harry of Maharashtra. But she doesn’t talk smack unless she needs to. She quietly goes about dispensing justice in all androgynous glory. But even the feisty Shivani (Rani Mukerji) meets her match in a drug and human trafficking King pin and his nexus. She’s too tough to lie down and he’s too wily to be caught off guard. It’s the perfect set up for some testosterone overdose. With a male protagonist this would’ve turned in to a battle of muscles. But with Rani at the helm, it becomes a battle of the sexes. And when she does beat up men like rag dolls you want to cheer for her hoarse.

The reason you empathize with Rani’s character and her skirmish is because she is fighting the good fight. You’re exposed to the misdeeds of the villain pretty early. You hate him when you see him exercise such control over helpless girls and their virgin minds and bodies. Human trafficking is a serious crime. And Mardaani gives you the low down unadulterated. Seeing such emotional torture being inflicted on young girls can have only one effect: condemnation. That’s the intelligent part of writing in the film. It’s designed to hit you exactly where it hurts. Nonetheless every shot of misogyny is shot with careful censorship. You won't feel offended by the visual just by the characters. Good job by director Pradeep Sarkar and writer Gopi Puthran.

Despite the tactful writing the movie still portrays a clichéd black and white, good versus evil scenario. The bad guys are just plain evil. There’s one scene where the bad boy Walt (Tahir Bhasin) breaks down in tears. But that’s too little. No such qualms for Rani’s character though. She’s more man than most of us will ever be. Her character’s bravado is spot on. But before the plain good versus bad portions spoil the fun in Mardaani its emotional grip takes control. You’re shown the underbelly of Mumbai and New Delhi (stereotypes intact) and the suffering of helpless young girls. So when justice is finally dispensed it feels adequately justified.

What doesn’t quite work is seeing the pint-sized Rani take the wind out of six-foot bad guys. The martial arts inspired hand combat looks a little off. But heck when you know it’s for emotions and not for machismo you let go of finer details. Full marks to Rani Mukerji’s attempt and performance. The expletives never seem jarring, the androgyny doesn’t seem misplaced. She’s the hero of Mardaani and she’s pitch perfect. The surprise package is Tahir Bhasin, playing the bad boy. The lad has some serious talent. His bad guy act is easily the best of the year.

You can watch Mardaani for all the wrong reasons and feel underwhelmed. Don't watch it for Rani Mukerji trying to be a Salman Khan. She’s not. Don’t watch it for true grit or precise realism; this is still a dialogue driven entertainer. Don’t watch it for song and dance, there isn’t any. Watch it for thrills; watch it with a pro-feminist stance. And you could find the right perspective.