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Originally posted by: BeShArAm
Anyone here seen it???
The movie Madras Cafe was the most unbiased take on the Tamil-Srilankan war. If you are more politically aware of eventsit will be much easier for you to grasp the movie. The genre which people dong want to touch considering the Backlash. The reasons behind the conflicts, the politics around it were depicted in convincing manner and were not shallow.
I wanted an intense thriller keeping me engaged throughout the movie. The locations were real the south's basic life the streets and the nature shown beautifully. Cinematography is very good every simple scene is made into art. The civil war scenes the brutal killing was heavy to watchIt shows why sometimes our Intel fails due to poor backing of politicians [which happens most of times] and why we lost our Prime minister even though we have able intel officers.
I believe first time I have seen how the covert operations take place and how the RAW agents work no heroism or OTT stunts
Here I find the RAW director Siddharth Basu and Raw Madras Desk Bala very good and honest to their roles. The way their department works is very nicely shown and a leak can become possible threat to country.
Nargis was surprise in movie. She has taken many efforts to portray serious character. English dialogues had subtitles in hindi.
Rashi khanna making debut was army officer wife. she was good too.
Now coming to John Abraham was a so convincing with his intense looks and dialogues. he just kills it in serious scenes and action scenes. The grief of failure and sorrow is touching.
His hairy look was a shocker though
What I did not like is the show pace in first half, cant complain coz it makes the base of film.
The background score does full justice to the feel of film, very intense.
I will say go and watch film if you like thrilling and engaging film with a solid back story behind every doing.
Will not like if songs are mandatory part of movie for you. and requires attention throughout to think.I will take one more post dedicating it to the efforts of Shoojit Sircar and John. Madras Caf stayed with Shoojit for 7 years with no takers for serious, no song and dance film, especially a political thriller.
So happy that John took special interest in movie and decided to made it. There are some stories which need to be told through cinema. The tamil srilankan sensitive issue never was told in such unbiased way, the secret of Assassination got locked in files never came out. Kudos to them for making such a film without giving up essence of movie or the fear of backlash or failure 👏
I loved the ending with Rabindrnath Tagore€™s poem.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Shoojit Sircar€™s Madras Cafe starring John Abraham and Nargis Fakhri is not just another typical Bollywood masala flick but is a thought provoking, heart touching political drama. It€™s a film that will keep you and your eyes glued to the seat and the screen, effortlessly. Sircar has given meaty roles to all his characters and not just the leads.
The opening scene of Madras Cafe showcases khoon kharaba and merciless killing of innocent people. The scene then effectively moves on to the present where we see John in despair trying to overcome his sorrows with alcohol. Our hunkalicious drunken John Abraham (Vikram Singh) then visits a church where he recalls the blood-curdling tales of the Lankan wars and then the flashback begins. From here, the film takes us back to the 1980€™s and is set against the backdrop of Sri Lankan wars.
John Abraham is a military officer who€™s ordered to carry out covert operations in Sri Lanka during the rise of Anna Bhaskaran (played by Ajay Rathnam ), the leader of a fictitious rebel group LTF. On John€™s arrival in the war struck country, he meets Nargis Fakhri (Jaya) who is a British war correspondent. No, there isn€™t any filmy style €˜love at first sight€™ that evolves between the two. We€™re glad that Sircar has delivered his film with practicality. What we notice is that, while John speaks in Hindi, Nargis responds in English. Maybe she could€™ve delivered at least one Hindi dialogue, but we aren€™t complaining. We guess the Rockstar babe got her acting right because she spoke a language that she€™s well-versed with€ Moving on, during John€™s stay in Sri Lanka a lot unfolds including a tragic death, followed by double crossing, kidnapping and many more twists.
While being engaged in the politics involved, it€™s quite apparent that Sircar hasn€™t ignored the importance of relationships in a person€™s life. Newbie Rashi Khanna (Ruby Singh), who plays John€™s wife in the film doesn€™t have a lot of screen presence but all the same she serves her purpose. Sircar has delicately portrayed the kind of relationship that a military officer has with his wife and how the love for our own country overshadows any other kind of love€
Throughout the film, we€™re aware that there€™s going to be an assassination. Despite knowing it€™s going to happen, we still dread the scene and hope against hope that John saves the day. However, Shoojit knows what he€™s doing and ensures that John only plays a hero and not some larger-than-life superhero in the film. We love the way Sircar has facilely designed a realistic fiction film!
The cinematography is mind blowing with terrific visualisations and sound effects. Nothing is overdone in the film. Madras Cafe sticks to its genre and remains a political thriller throughout the film without romance, item numbers, vulgarity and unnecessary skin show. Music by Shantanu Moitra is pleasing to the ears. The film isn€™t force-filled with unnecessary naach gaana just to add a romantic factor and we totally love that!
The film ends with an intriguing thought, who really won the war. It keeps us pondering for a while that nobody gains at the end of a war, there€™s only loss€ As the narration ends, the beautiful track Maula Sun Le Re starts playing. Hmmm€ Is John asking the Lord to listen to his pleas for his film to work? He surely doesn€™t need that for this film to work as it€™s the best political thriller that Bollywood has ever seen!
Rating: 4 out of 5
MADRAS CAFE
Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, JA Entertainment and Rising Sun Films Madras Cafe (UA) is the story of how and why an ex-prime minister of India was killed by Tamil militants. Although it is heavily inspired by the real-life assassination of erstwhile prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, the names of the characters have been changed to make the story fictional.
The film begins with R & A W agent Vikram Singh (John Abraham) ruing the assassination of the former prime minister and confessing before a priest in the church that the prime minister couldve been saved. He narrates the entire story of how militant Tamil leader Anna (Ajay Ratnam), revolting in Sri Lanka, had masterminded the assassination as he feared that the prime minister, if elected to power again, would thwart his attempts at creating tension in Sri Lanka.
Vikram Singh is sent by the government of India to help the Sri Lankan government fight Tamil militants who were destroying the peace in the country. Vikram is asked by Robin Dutt a.k.a. RD (Siddhartha Basu) to report to Bala (Prakash Belawadi) in Sri Lanka. Soon, Vikram realises that something is amiss and that highly confidential and secret information is being leaked by someone. Before he can act on pinning down the person/s responsible for the leakage, Vikram Singh is kidnapped. After being freed, he is packed off to India by Bala.
Who kidnapped Vikram Singh? Who is leaking information and to whom?
Anyway, once in India, RD, Vikram Singh and their team are still trying to help Sri Lanka restore peace while Bala is doing the same in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, intelligence officers intercept some telephonic conversations between Anna and others. The conversations are decoded and it emerges that there may be an assassination attempt on the ex-prime minister of India, who, incidentally, had resigned due to the Indian governments failure to contain the tension in Sri Lanka.
RD, Vikram Singh and others are at their wits end, trying hard to prevent the assassination bid. Meanwhile, they learn about the person who used to leak the secret information.
Somnath Dey and Shubendu Bhattacharyas story is a cinematic version of the assassination bid and ultimate murder of erstwhile prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The duos screenplay (with additional screenplay by Dusan Tolmac and script supervision by Ronnie Lahiri) tends to get long-winding and boring in the first half, partly because of the nature of the story and partly because there are a lot of characters played by new faces and it, therefore, becomes difficult for the audience to remember their names and faces. The drama picks up after interval as there is a lot happening in the second half and the pace is also faster. The post-interval portion also has some shocking twists and turns, adding to the drama.
However, the inherent weaknesses of the screenplay, from the commercial point of view rather than from the point of view of the film per se, are: firstly, by its very nature, the film appears like a docu-drama which would appeal to a thin section of the audience only; secondly, since the assassination happened ages ago, not too large an audience may like to re-live the episode of history which the film tries to re-create; thirdly, since the film begins with Vikram Singh saying that the ex-prime ministers life could have been saved and then it goes into flashback, the audience knows right from the word go what the films ending would be. Also, there is too much emphasis on the technical side of the assassination bid and that will not hold universal appeal.
Dialogues, penned by Juhi Chaturvedi (with additional dialogues by Tushar Jain), are very good and natural.
John Abraham does well but he couldve used his body language to more advantage. Nargis Fakhri, as the war journalist based out of Britain, gets limited scope. Her dialogues in accented English will greatly restrict her appeal to a thin section of the audience in the big cities only. Siddhartha Basu acts ably as RD. Raashi Khanna is okay as Vikram Singhs wife, Ruby. Prakash Belawadi shines in the role of Bala. Ajay Ratnam ought to have been far more effective as Anna. Kannan Arunachalam (as Shri), Arijit Dutta (as Mallaya), Sanjay Gurbaxani (as prime minister of India), Dinesh Nair (as Rajshekaran), Aayaam Mehta (as Vasu), Piyush Pandey (as cabinet secretary), Avijit Dutta (as Swaroop), Nissar Allana (as priest), Banvari Taneja (as Guruji), Dibang (as Raghu), Mark Engels (as Hastings), Stephen Fahl (as Reed), Tarun Bali (as Rishi), Gaurav U.K. Sharma (as Kamal Tegi), Alok Jain (as Ajit), Tushar Jain (as Ghosh), Udayabanu Maheshwaran (as Saba), Parmeshwar (as Narayanan), P.Y. Jose (as Kanda), Ajay Nataraj (as Kannan Kannan), Mahendran (as Selvam), Johnson Manjali (as Pandyan), Balachandran Puranattukara (as Subramanian), Jayaraj (as Capt. Murali), Gayathri Devarajan (as Balas wife), Hima Singh (as Kamal Tegis wife) and C. Suresh Kumar (as PA to prime minister) provide fair support. Rajeev K. Panday (as Susheel Pandey alias S.P.) and Krishna (as bomb maker Vijayan Joseph) lend formidable support. Others are also good.
Shoojit Sircars narrative style does justice to the script. But it must be added that although the director has succeeded in making a film with a lot of finesse, the fact remains that the narration will appeal to the high-gentry audience in the big cities mainly. Connoisseurs of good cinema will relish what they see on the screen but the large base of mass audience will not really approve of the drama. Shantanu Moitras background score (background score produced by George and Tanuj) is very effective. His music is class-appealing. Manohar Vermas action is nice. Kamaljeet Negis camerawork is extraordinary. Sets (by Vinod Kumar) are realistic. Chandrashekhar Prajapatis editing is sharp.
On the whole, Madras Cafe is a class-appealing film which will do well in the high-end multiplexes of big cities mainly. Its performance in the single-screen cinemas and ordinary multiplexes, frequented by masses, will be below the mark. Given its cost, the film will see those associated with it in the red.
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Shoojit Sircar redeemed himself after the failure of his first film with the commercially and critically acclaimed hit Vicky Donor. Vicky Donor was a light, frothy film about the life of a sperm donor. Madras Caf by the looks of the trailer seemed as diametrically opposite from Vicky Donor as possible. The trailers portrayed an edgy, dark espionage thriller and the promotions were kept low considering the genre of the film. Indeed Madras Caf will work only with a good word-of-mouth. Let€™s discuss how Madras Caf eventually shaped up.
Story: An Indian intelligence officer Vikram Singh (John Abraham) is sent to Sri Lanka to work for a covert operation. His job is to bring a peaceful resolution to the ugly clashes which wrecked havoc in the country due to the violent civil war. Whilst there, he discovers different motives, different plans (among which is a plan to assassinate the former Indian president). He chances upon an Indo-British war correspondent Jaya Sahni (Nargis Fakhri) who turns out to be of great help for him. The story then progresses like a subdued thriller and ends in one of the most humanely empathetic finales for a Hindi film I have seen in a long time. Watch it to believe it.
Screenplay and Direction: The writers Somnath Dey and Shubendu Bhattacharya don€™t miss a beat. They have imbibed the pseudo-realities of those times into the narrative and added their own layers of fiction into the screenplay without ever losing touch with the reality. The dialogues are also appropriate for a film like Madras Caf and works in tandem with the steady direction of Shoojit Sircar. The films hold up from start to finish due to the assured directing skills of Shoojit. I can safely say that on the hands of any other less competent director, Madras Caf wouldn€™t have been half as good a film as it turned out to be. The unbiased narrative should be applauded by one and all.
Madras Cafe Review
Miscellaneous and Music: Madras Caf looks exquisite and real because of the camerawork by Kamaljeet Negi and the production design by the production designer. Kamaljeet€™s cinematography makes us feel like we are a part of the world of the film and yet we are allowed the distinction of forming our opinions unlike the characters in the film who have to do everything instinctively. The editing is first rate and keeping an expansive film like Madras Caf down to a meagre 130 minutes must have been a difficult task for the editor. The action scenes too are shot with elan without being overtly stylistic. The music and background score by Shantanu Moitra gives Madras Caf the mood it aspires to have. It lifts the film up.
Acting: Can€™t say it any other way €" John Abraham delivers his life€™s best performance. Maybe not his career defining performance but certainly his best work. His Vikram Singh looks like a real law enforcement agent and the performance works primarily because Shoojit has astutely not made him the center point of Madras Caf. Nargis Fakhri delivers a surprisingly good performance and is believable as the war correspondent. The other actors in the film like Siddharth Basu, Prakash Belawadi, Ajay Ratnam all deliver top notch performances. The casting of Madras Caf is one of its biggest strengths because everybody looks real in their roles.
Conclusion and Box Office: Madras Caf is perhaps the best spy thriller ever made in Hindi cinema. It keeps its aspirations low and doesn€™t overreach. The story moves along fluently and the viewer is not left out, even if they don€™t have any knowledge of the time and incidents Madras Caf refers to. Madras Caf deserves to be seen by the ones who like dark, edgy, realistic films. Box office wise, as expected due to the low buzz, Madras Caf won€™t open well. But I can safely say that the film will pick up and might even turn out to be profitable for the makers.
Positives:
Negatives:
Rating: 
https://www.indiaforums.com/article/metro-in-dino-review-its-a-musical-love-letter-to-the-lost-the-lonely-and-the-longing_224199
https://www.indiaforums.com/article/the-hunt-rajiv-gandhi-assassination-case-review-focused-fearless-retelling-of-the-famous-political-k_224259
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