Rani all the way

Name : Mardaani
Cast : Rabi Mukerji, Jisshu Sengupta and Tahir Bhasin
Direction : Pradeep Sarkar
Genre : Action-drama
Rating : **1/2
Like : Rani and length of the film
UnLike : The badly handled climax

It is Rani Mukerji who holds ‘Mardaani’ together. In a way the film has its unusual traits which include facts such as it being the first Adult certified film from Yashraj camp. It is also a film that lasts just about 113 minutes which is very unusual for the camp. The film has a protagonist heroine who is not in her chiffons mouthing Lata numbers at Swiss mountains.

The reference to Chulbul Pandey, notwithstanding, it projects the tale of a police officer far removed from ‘Singham’ and the likes. We for a change have a lady playing a pivotal role normally assumed to be the male bastion of kick, beat, slap, punch, kick and kill without any limit. It is not that Rani is the first lady cop. She is arguably backed up with the first role of meat and substance (and of course the production house!). Earlier the likes of Hema and Rekha converted the uniform into a costume drama. Rani does not. If Dimple brought angst to the role, Rani brings spirit and energy to the role.

Shivani Shivaji Rao (Rani Mukerji) is an inspector who is always on the prowl and is willing to take law into her hands and deliver instant justice. She beats up a hooligan gang for the mayhem they create at a shopping centre and also raids a flesh trade home. Soon she has a huge challenge on hand when Pyaari (Priyanka Sharma) a sales girl at a traffic signal goes missing. The little girl is incidentally the police officer’s foster child and friend of the officer’s niece. This begins the cat and mouse game between the guy who runs the child sex racket Walt (Tahir Bhasin) and Shivani. In all of hundred minutes the filmmaker Pradeep Sarker tells the story of how the smart lady police officer dares and delivers. The twists and turns are indeed interesting but for a filmmaker who eschews the formulistic templates of main stream cinema for a good part suddenly succumbs and gives in to the temptation of the trigger happy, muscle flexing variety in a climax that preaches violence and anarchy. In fact as the film leads to the climax you are convinced that the filmmaker is on a different path though not avant garde, but he so visibly slips into the predictable that it glaringly shows. Editor Sanjib Dutta, somewhere, fails to put things in proper perspective.

The film belongs to Rani Mukerji – in ways more than one! She gives one of her best performances. After having taken on the garb of the guys in ‘Dil Bole Hadippa’, she sticks to the basics and within the stated premise delivers a punch-filled performance. She is not just the central character; she is the soul of the film. Foot falls are likely to increase given the dialogues and the hopeful mouth to ear campaign that follows a film of this kind. It is also redeeming to watch a police officer role being portrayed without too many heroics. However, I have a serious problem with the propagation of the idea that the police or the citizen for that matter can get vengeful and destroy the criminal.