SIMRAN | Reviews and Box Office | Hansal's Highest Grosser - Page 5

In a revealing sequence from Hansal Mehta's new movie, Praful (Kangana Ranaut), after a successful night at baccarat in Las Vegas, raises a toast to herself, fully convinced of her brilliance.

Mehta's Simran is brimming with tributes to its female lead, giving her scene after scene to prove her comic timing (not always spot on), her ability to evoke pathos (not always convincing) and her skill at switching registers in a matter of seconds (not always successful). Despite the presence of other actors, the 125-minute movie is a one-hander, with Ranaut present in nearly every frame from start to finish. Some parts of Simran play out like improvisational scenes from an acting workshop in which Ranaut is trying out various emotions to see which one fits.

The film is named after the nom de guerre Praful adopts as she begins to rob banks to pay off debts incurred from gambling. The bubbly goes flat very fast for Simran, as does the movie for Mehta and Ranaut.

The actor has also played a controversial behind-the-scenes role in the shaping of the movie. She has been given credit for the additional dialogue and story, leaving the original writer Apurva Asrani fuming. It's hard to tell which bits were from the original and which were a result of Ranaut's intervention, as a result of which Simran careens between an American indie-style portrait of a middle-class woman's descent into crime and a screwball comedy involving a bank robber who has one of the most unusual stick-up routines in recent memory: a piece of paper in which a bomb threat has been written with lipstick.

Praful is loosely based on the "Bombshell Bandit, the title given to Sandeep Kaur, who held up various banks in and around Los Angeles over a two-month period in 2014 to pay off gambling debts. Sandeep Kaur was eventually arrested. Her experiences, if they had been properly filmed, would have lent themselves to a gripping cautionary tale about an immigrant who loses her way after aspiring to a lifestyle she clearly could not afford. Simran, however, doesn't have the complexity or the rigour needed to bring this character to the screen.

The movie exists as a testament to Ranaut's awesomeness. Praful is an extension both of Ranaut's character Rani from Queen (2014) as well as her public persona. Like Rani and the headline-courting Ranaut, the Atlanta resident is a sunny-natured woman with a large and golden heart, a commonsensical approach to life's big problems, flexible morality and a fearless honesty to see through hypocrisy and make-believe. The star and the character merge into one, and the movie suffers as a result.

Praful's hapless parents (played by Kishore Shahane and Hiten Kumar) and her possible fiance (Sohum Shah) struggle to make sense of her, as will viewers. Praful's devotion to her needs and happiness makes it hard to empathise with her actions, even though the movie goes to great lengths to justify her journey from happily divorced housekeeping department staffer at a hotel to gambler and then bank robber.

Bank robbery, which has assumed the quality of a cultural artefact in American lore, is treated as one big joke, as Praful gleefully holds up various awkward-looking American extras with the Atlanta police none the wiser. Two other extras play caricature loan sharks; one of them behaves as though he is in a Michael Mann movie rather than a Bollywood attempt to tackle Americana.

In her sense of hurt at being denied the breaks she thinks she deserves and the perilous journey she undertakes to overcome her debts, Praful is always alone. As she lives a double life, removing the creases from hotel beds after having divested a bank of its deposits, her universe never expands to include other experiences or, at the very least, a bigger picture of other Americans struggling with their bank balances. In David Mackenzie's Hell or High Water (2016), for instance, a pair of brothers starts robbing banks to save their family ranch from foreclosure, and their actions are always placed against the larger economic distress that has affected rural America over the past few years.

Praful's parents are mere witnesses to her dubious decisions, while Sohum Shah's Sameer, who is attracted to Praful's forthright manner, is an excuse to introduce some songs into a narrative that could have existed without them.

The monomania that characterises Simran the furtherance of the assertion that Kangana Ranaut can carry off just about anything dooms the movie to repetition and facetiousness. Ranaut gives the role her all, but her relentless optimism and self-belief in the face of trying circumstances are barely convincing. The charm is laid on thick, even when not required. Praful is famed for her cheesy humour, but she is often the only one laughing at her jokes. Since the movie does not require viewers to be a part of this private conversation between a movie star and her character, a staggering sense of disengagement is par for the course.

#Simran the film I must say this is a MUST WATCH @mehtahansal brilliant direction #KanganaRanaut YOU ARE something else!Best actress!

Just watched #Simran loved it , very simple story. Gujaratis will like it. Climax could have been more touchy or Emotional. #KanganaRanaut

In the three years since Queen, Kangana Ranaut has become Hindi cinema's leading actress. This rapid ascent is made even more remarkable by her seemingly using this opportunity not to perpetuate her stardom but to bring as many indelible characters to the screen as she can before public favour shifts. It speaks volumes about someone who's fought hard to attain this standing in the industry that she'd seek not to consolidate but to explore. In all her films since 2014 (save Ungli and I Love NY, both of which were signed in leaner times), she's unquestionably been the driving force of the narrative; her character's name, or nickname, is in the title of four of the films. If you don't think that's unprecedented, name another female actor working in mainstream Hindi cinema who's on a similar streak.

Unlike Alia Bhatt, whose performances often transcend the material she's given, Ranaut's characters of late have been as memorable as her interpretation of them. Rani in Queen and Julia in Rangoon are the kind of roles Hindi film heroines are supposed to get once in five years as a reward for fluttering their eyes in terrible films starring significantly older heroes. Ranaut's gone and added a third: Praful Patel, a 30-year-old hotel staff employee in Atlanta, divorced, living with her Gujarati parents, saving up to buy her own house. And along the way, she becomes Simran, the Lipstick Bandit, robber of banks.

Praful's troubles begin with a spectacularly successful night of gambling in Las Vegas. Instead of quitting while she's ahead, she returns, loses her winnings, then her deposit on the house. Drunk and desperatenot an unusual state for a Kangana charactershe borrows $32,000 from a Hindi film version of a Vegas loan shark (he chews on a toothpick and says "babygirl a fair bit). Unsurprisingly, she loses that too. Her dream house sold to someone else, with no savings to dip into and her sourpuss father refusing to help out, Praful finds herself having a breakdown in a convenience store.

You have to appreciate the patience of director Hansal Mehta for not rushing this moment. We're almost at the halfway mark when Praful commits her first robbery, an unpremeditated grab at the cash register. Even when this quickly escalates to robbing banks, we know enough about the impetuosity and fly-by-seat nature of this character by then that it doesn't seem like a stretch. Her approach is remarkably simpleshe just hands over a note written in lipstick that says she has a bomb strapped to herbut each robbery throws up a new wrinkle, like the teller who has a stroke when he's handed the note, or Praful's little improvisations with her fake bomb.

I'd lost interest in the sniping between writer and editor Apurva Asrani and Ranaut in the run-up to the film's release, but having watched Simran I can understand why they'd squabble over the writing credits (officially, he's story, screenplay and dialogue; she's additional story and dialogue). Praful is a fantastically etched character, all quirks and hard edges and nervous energy, like a '40s screwball comedienne crossed with Gena Rowlands. But she can also drop her guard and be playful, like when she teases Sameer (Sohum Shah), a straight ace her parents are trying to get her married to, for being a perpetual "good boy.

Not all of Simran is as persuasive as Simran herself. The loan sharks seem to have wandered in from another, very different kind of movie; Praful's parents aren't appealing enough to merit the amount of screen time they have; and a generic, slushy score is poured over everything, as if this were some big Bollywood romance instead of a splintery indie. The "How to rob a bank video that Praful looks up on YouTube is, in theory, a promising gag, but not in practice. There's also a frankly awful car chasefurther proof that Hindi films are at their most self-sabotaging in the last 10 minutes. The Sameer interludes are welcome, and beautifully played by Ranaut and Shah, but there's a particularly long one with a mawkish song that slows down the narrative just when it's speeding up.

Placed against these quibbles are small delights: Praful's robbery kitpurple wig, shades, hoodie and track pants; her inability to resist standing up for herself even when staying quiet might result in a loan from her father; Sameer saying, "Tumhe saans lete dekhna bhi ek tarah ki kamyabi hai (it's a minor achievement even to watch you breathe). And a large one: watching Ranaut flick emotions on and off like a light switch, using that intuitive, offbeat style of hers to find humour, a little heartbreak, and zero sentimentality in the story of a stickup artist. After all the drama of the last month, it's nice to be reminded that offscreen Ranaut, no matter how entertaining or scandalous, cannot hold a candle to onscreen Ranaut.