Madras Cafe Reviews & Box-office Collections - Page 3

Madras Cafe movie review

Director Shoojit Sircar who was lastly hailed with Vicky Donor breaks the shells of satirical humor and comes out shrewdly for a series of serious saga.

Film: Madras Cafe
Cast: John Abraham, Nargis Fakhri, Rashi Khanna;
Director: Shoojit Sircar;
Music: Shantanu Moitra;

Director Shoojit Sircar who was lastly hailed with Vicky Donor breaks the shells of satirical humor and comes out shrewdly for a series of serious saga. The Sri Lankan Civil War in Madras Cafe isn€™t exploited but is dealt with immense responsibility.

Shoojit Sircar with a heavy heart goes deeper into hallows of the civil war which sooner takes a political turn. What we appreciate about Sircar is his keen curiosity into the detailing of the petty department and links, which lead to the moving climax.

Each character has a weighty role and the director designs them with perfection, which doesn€™t go overboard.  Among them there is one Vikram Singh (John Abraham), an encouraging Indian soldier who is picked up by the intelligence agency for a secret operation in Sri Lanka, which is going through an outrageous civil war lead by Anna (Ajay Rathnam) a leader of fictitious rebel group LTF (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). 

As Vikram goes deeper into the operation there with an intention to disrupt the ruling group he discovers a bizarre issue that could directly affect India.

There is no denying to the fact that the plot of the assassination is inspired by late politician Rajiv Gandhi€™s demise, but is entirely different. 

This scenario comes in the second half while the first half has the gruesome butchery in Sri Lanka which is marvelously recreated by cinematographer Kamaljeet Negi in Tamil Nadu and Kerela.

Letting the hard slaughter prevail the light moments between the Vikram and Rahi (debutant Ruby Singh) are also given a limelight. But the director never misses the plot and gives a thunderous fascinating twist.

John Abrahim is impeccable as Vikram Singh. It€™s his third outing this year and all of them are better than the other. He gives a plausible performance.

Nargis Fakri is cast with a deep intention. Sircar knows her and brings out what it is required for the character like an international journalist who mostly has English dialect. Nargis fits into the role.

The debutant actress Rashi Khanna, has a pleasant appearance on screen. Ajay Rathnam looks commanding.  
Music by Shantanu Moitra is great.

• Sneha May Francis

This could be a first for any Bollywood director. To successfully abandon over-the-top Bollywood clichs and staple musical sojourns to create an action drama that€™s incredibly taut, gritty, thought-provoking, engaging and realistic.

And achieving it all, without ever tiring the audience.

What€™s more he pitches a story inspired by history about an intelligence agent, who unlike his Bollywood peers never (ever) indulges in song-and-dance routines or implausible dare-devil stunts. If we had to draw a reference, it€™d only be his trademark aviators.

And, to do it with two actors, one a pretty damsel and the other a seasoned Bollywood hulk, who are (often) guilty of €œwooden performances€, is an act that truly deserves applause.

Director Shoojit Sircar is the man of the moment.

Although writers Somnath Dey and Shubendu Bhattacharya pen a rather indulgent narrative at 2-hours-and-45-minutes, it is paced without inducing any fatigue or distraction. In fact, it educates and informs about a conflict that€™s gone unnoticed in Bollywood frames.

It unhurriedly achieves what it sets out to €" revisit a bloody civil war that had engulfed an island nation for over 26 years and how it affected an assassination that botched the Indian history.

Cinematographer Kamaljeet Negi skilfully textures the war-torn struggles, without exaggeration, and his efforts are aptly complimented by Manohar Verma€™s action sequences.

Vikram is a macho military officer who is ordered to carry out covert operations in the divided Sri Lanka. He€™s instructed by top Indian government officials to put into play their Prime Minister€™s vision of peace.

The negotiations suddenly turn cold when a mole in their system double-crosses, impacting the mission irrevocably.

The repercussions are unforgiving, and lead to a spate of bloodbaths that eventually lead to the death of the Indian leader.

 €˜Madras Caf€™ remains nonjudgmental but claims that if timely action were taken then the killing could€™ve been averted.

John Abraham abandons his stiff, starry persona and lends an incredible maturity to Vikram. He never overshadows the story with his heroism as is traditional in Bollywood, and allows Vikram to remain mere flesh and blood.

His interactions with his wife, played effectively by debutant Rashi Khanna, are poetic without being overdramatic. And, to think that people can romance without a soundtrack playing in the backdrop lends credibility to the script.

Nargis Fakhri also steps up, and abandons her pout to give war correspondent Jaya an assertive portrayal. Clearly, she is far more convincing when not running around trees.

Quiz-whiz Siddartha Basu also displays immense authority as government officer RD.

Although the narrative borrows heavily from the history books it never quite accepts it.

LTTE€™s guerrilla warfare, use of cyanide tablets, and their radical leader Prabhakaran (renamed Anna) are retained albeit under a different name. The revolutionary LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is renamed Liberation of Tamil Front (LTF).

Even the rebel group€™s distinct way of allowing international journalists into their turf is intricately redesigned.

If there€™s any oversight, it€™s in the casting, wherein the Tamil rebels could€™ve benefited by more reliable faces. There€™s Prakash Belawadi who nails officer Bala€™s power play with deftness. But, the others aren€™t carved out as realistically.

Even the dialogues by Juhi Chaturvedi remain partial to Hindi and seldom allow the rebels to speak in their language. Using subtitles could€™ve averted this jarring mistake, especially since this ethnic fight was about their identity.

€˜Madras Caf€™ rewards us with a story that refuses to bow-down to Bollywood stereotypes and traditional narrative, and remains true to what it promises to capture.

Truly a first for Bollywood, and hopefully, not the last.

Paul Greengrass has well and truly invaded Bollywood. Earlier this year, Nikhil Advani€™s stylishly-made D-Day took a leaf out of the Greengrass textbook, in technique and treatment. Shoojit Sircar, the director of Madras Cafe, takes the Greengrass influence a step further, borrowing not just style elements, but plot points from the English filmmaker€™s Green Zone, about a US soldier in Baghdad (played by Matt Damon) learning some hard truths about America€™s war on Iraq.

The similarity to Green Zone apart (a couple of brownie points subtracted for lack of originality), Madras Cafe is a commendable cinematic achievement for Sircar €" it€™s well-shot, evenly-paced, nicely-scored and, to top all that, it€™s well-acted too. It ticks most boxes right, and while presenting its version of a real event, it engages you with tropes that make a compelling thriller. Sircar€™s direction is sharp, energetic and relentless. More importantly, he stays true to the subject, and resists the temptation to cop-out with a more uplifting finale.

If you€™re aware of the Sri Lankan Civil War, you€™ll know that there have been two very different ideologies at play. There€™s a clear divide between the followers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, now defunct) and those who oppose it, and its founder V Prabhakaran (now deceased) is considered to be a revolutionary by one section and a terrorist by the other. For someone not connected with the issue at any personal level, it€™s just an interesting story.

The plot revolves around an Indian military officer, Vikram Singh (John Abraham), who€™s sent to the Lankan city Jaffna to curb the activities of Anna Bhaskaran (modelled on Prabhakaran) and his outfit, the LTF. A great part of the film €" almost up to interval point €" is dedicated to the set-up: the differences between the Indian government and the LTF, Vikram€™s efforts to thwart Bhaskaran€™s plans, his discovery of certain hidden truths. The intermission, if anything, is a disruption in a narrative that rests largely on taking the audience from one point to another without pausing for breath.

You take a couple of minutes to settle into the film post-interval, but once you do, you€™re hooked again. This is where the meat lies, with the action shifting between various cities, and is probably the story Sircar and his team set out to tell anyway: the planning and execution of a former Indian Prime Minister by Bhaskaran and the LTF.

Unlike Oliver Stone€™s JFK, that deals with the investigation that followed US president John F Kennedy€™s assassination, and Anurag Kashyap€™s Black Friday, a film that looks at the planning and the aftermath of the Bombay serial bomb blasts, Madras Cafe is always moving in one direction €" the assassination of the politician. It€™s an eventuality the audience is informed of in the first scene itself. And given that it€™s based on a real event €" the Rajiv Gandhi assassination €" the surprise element is ruled out at the onset. It€™s very much, then, a €œHow€ film rather than a €œWhat€ film.

Sircar and writers Subhendhu Bhattacharya, Somnath Dey and Juhi Chaturvedi tread on thin ice, but treat the film purely as a narrative tool. Cinematic liberties have been taken, names changed, and fictional characters introduced. Biases do creep in (Bhaskaran€™s shown to be an aggressive force, the ex-PM an almost noble, gentle soul) but that€™s not the thrust of the film. At the end of the day, like any compelling page-turner, Madras Cafe€™s main function is to engage and entertain.

The only bit that jars is the interaction between Vikram and an Indian-American journalist Jaya (Nargis Fakhri), where Vikram responds to Jaya€™s English lines in Hindi. The journalist could have been a Hindi-speaking one (even if from the US), or Vikram could simply reply in English, but the two actors communicate in a weird English-Hindi combination of words that dilute the impact of some rather important scenes. Fakhri, speaking in a language she€™s comfortable with, is a lot better than she was in her debut film, Rockstar. Her character is an exact replica of the one played by Amy Ryan in Green Zone, not to mention a couple of scenes involving her €" including the last one €" that are a straight lift.

Madras Cafe€™s big victory lies in Sircar€™s execution of the drama, aided by an efficient crew, especially cinematographer Kamaljeet Negi and editor Chandrashekhar Prajapati. Casting director Jogi does a swell job too, bringing in the all right actors €" many of them from outside the acting profession €" to lend a tinge of reality to the proceedings. Siddhartha Basu, who plays Vikram€™s boss RD, and Prakash Belawadi, who plays Bala, an Indian operative in Jaffna, are both really believable in their roles.

At the centre of it all is Abraham, playing off the talented ensemble intelligently, sticking to the basics and getting the job done. There seems to be a great understanding between Abraham and Sircar (who collaborated on Vicky Donor earlier, where Abraham was producer) and an implicit faith in each other that reflects in the two films they have worked on together.

For the director, who chooses an unconventional theme but mounts it like a big-budget action entertainer, Madras Cafe is a major victory. Watch Madras Cafe for the craftsmanship of Sircar and his team, and because it€™s good, unadulterated storytelling. Paul Greengrass would approve.