As a schizophrenic singer-composer accused of a ghastly murder, Ajay Devgn gives a knock-out performance in writer-director Anees Bazmee’s thriller, which startles the hell out of viewers if they aren’t aware of the source material, the Hollywood thriller Primal Fear, which catapulted Ed Norton to international fame.
Devgn puts in a first–rate performance as the wily criminal Tarang, a disturbing embodiment of what criminal psychologist Colin Wilson once described as a genius gone the wrong way. Devgn gets all the nuances of his complex role right: the sudden mood shifts, the inexplicable lapses of memory…Swerving between a stutter and a swagger, Devgn fills the screen with a fascinating fury.
Akshaye Khanna, swerving stylishly away from the blood bank of ‘be-negative’ in Humraaz to ‘be-prositive’ in this film, as the lawyer trapped between ethics and legalese is a perfect foil to Devgn. His lighter moment with pop crooner Sargam (Urmila), where he pretends to have heard her songs, reveal Khanna’s untapped comic talent.
The scenes where Akshaye Khanna interrogates his chameleon-like client crackle with an inner tension, thanks to director Bazmee’s dialogues written in collaboration with Neeraj Pathak and young Amar Mohile’s background score, which encircles the hunter and the prey until we don’t know which is which.
The basic premise for the film is startlingly new-fangled for Hindi cinema. So far, courtroom whodunits have followed a fixed format and storytelling pattern. Bazmee changes and plays around with the rules of the thriller genre. Unfortunately, some of the characters, such as the judge played by Suhasini Mulay, the neck-in-the-collar prosecution lawyer played by Suresh Oberoi and especially the psychiatrist Seema Biswas (whose attempt to play a suave shrink is a hoot), seem to emulate the Hollywood pattern of brisk, glib-tongued professionals too closely.
Bazmi succeeds in creating a crisp crime concoction thanks to the riveting central performance. Ajay Devgn makes us overlook many of the film’s conspicuous absurdities and inconsistencies, such as the relationship between Tarang’s childhood sweetheart and Sargam (Urmila Matondkar), the pop singer who eventually becomes the bone of contention between Devgn and Khanna. If Sargam saw Tarang only as a guru and friend, why were the two shown singing duets (including an amusing contemporary interpretation of Nutan and Sunil Dutt’s immortal Saawan ka mahina in the 60s film Milan)?
The tangle within the triangle that occupies the second half of the narration moves away from Primal Fear. Urmila Matondkar is brought in to provide the mandatory dosage of glamour and emotions. With impeccable self-assurance, this criminally underused star-actress goes beyond the superficial requirements of her role to build a cogent inner life for her character. Whether it’s her outfits, jewellery and makeup, her dances or the few dramatic scenes that she’s given Urmila, once again proves she’s one of the most complete heroines we have today. So glamorous is her presence that audiences are likely to overlook the weight that she slips into her wispy role.
There are some interesting cameo characters lurking in the sinister shadows of this stylishly assembled jigsaw. The lighter moments between Farida Jalal as Akshaye Khanna’s bahu-hunting mom, and Tiku Talsania do not impinge on the taut narrative. When compared with the humbug-quotient in this year’s other thriller Humraaz (also inspired by a Hollywood source) Deewangee emerges trumps.
What gets in the way are the songs. Listless and languorous Ismail Darbar’s songs should’ve been put to sleep before they did the same to us.
Only the pre-climactic song-and-dance Dholi bajaaye dhol, where Urmila’s nimble toes work their magic to Vaibhavi Merchant’s chic choreography, has a place in the tightly structured narrative. The rest of the song breaks make us wonder why Hindi films need to convert even murder mysteries into musicals, with both the leading men sharing an equal number of love duets with the heroine.
Being the writer himself, director Anees Bazmi maintains a tight hold over the plot. The loose ends are more to do with the way the box office looks at our cinema than the way the director looks at entertainment-oriented cinema. A sincerity of purpose shines through in every detail of the Anees Bazmee’s script, from the way the characters speak and dress to the manner in which they deal with the dramatic crisis. Bazmi makes a concerted effort to go beyond the norms of formula filmmaking. His camera circles the two protagonists restlessly in the prison cell, as though searching for the welter of emotions beneath the pain-lashed words that the hurl at each other. The “open” ending, where we don’t know for sure if the sinister Tarang is finally dead or not, is chilling.
Though there are two gruesome sequences of violence (one involving a woman played by Tenaaz Currim, who’s beaten up badly and madly by the psychotic Tarang) the violence underlines the tragedy that haunts Bazmi’s perceptions: the tragedy of untapped talent and capabilities neglected or misused by exploitative elements in society.
There are cutting comments on the cut-throat state of the music industry in Mumbai. A music baron (Vijayendra Ghatge) is killed while his younger brother(Nirmal Pandey) steals the protagonist’s songs and markets them as his own. The angst of a wronged man outwardly projecting his violent protest against an unjust social order comes through in Ajay Devgn’s wounded and angry performance.
