Tame and tiresome

Uvaa

Cast: Om Puri, Sanjay Mishra, Rajit Kapoor and Jimmy Shergill

Direction: Jasbir Bhaati

Genre: Drama, Hardly anything, Crass and confused

The presence of Jimmy Shergill and Sanjay Mishra impelled me to the theatre. Good actors are often undone not just by the bizarre working of the market forces and therefore their career but also their choices. Probably the paradox that works in a vicious circle for them is that they get bad films and thus remain where they are and they are there because of the films they get. Director Jasbir Bhaati does singular disservice to such huge talent with such poorly etched roles that the actors are better off without this kind of cinema.

The major problem with the film is that the filmmaker starts off with an innocuous comedy based on school life (with over-aged kids – all in their 20s going to school!) and later navigates it to a pompous take on rape and how the judicial system handles it. Yet again we have a self-defeatist solution by propagating the theory that lawlessness can only be dealt with anarchical measures and that the legal alternative is not a choice.

Five good for nothing school kids flexing their muscle in the local area because their parents are powerful: Ram Pratap (Vikrant Rai), Anil Sharma (Rohan Mehra), Deen bhandu (Bhupinder Singh), Vikram Tyagi ( Lavin Gothi) and Salman Khan (Mohit Bhagel) are packed off to a residential school in the city in the hope that the English-medium school will impact their future better. Instead they ogle at anything in a skirt or a saree, keep behaving like juvenile delinquents and justify the harsh punishments at school that has completely lost touch with contemporary academics and is caught in a refrigerated idea of how schools run. It is here that they have for a school principal the highly talented Rajit Kapoor who too, like the other talented actors falls prey to a dubious script and makes faces in the name of acting.

In the later part of the film the tricks and games of the guys and gals having fun and frolic turns sharply to a case where the principal’s elder daughter is gang-raped. Three of the five, that is excluding Deen and Salman are implicated in the murder even as they are involved in the rescue of the girl. Even as the victim battles for life, the court drama with Parikshit Sahani as the judge goes on in an inane manner. Stepping in to fight the cause of the group is lawyer Jayashri (Archana Puran Singh­­--for once sober).

SP Tejaveer Singh (Jimmy Shergill) is in charge of the investigation and you smell a rat from the dubious manner in which he stares and walks as if he is out there more for the camera than for the script. It is a film that has keep away written all over it. It is sad to state that a filmmaker has in his team the likes of Om Puri and Jimmy Shergill and yet pans out a tame affair. In fact while at least Om Puri manages to escape with a role that does not require anything of him and keeps is repute and dignity intact, poor Jimmy is given a role as starched as his uniform and he suffers from having to play a character that is lost in its lack of credibility. There is no point in assessing any of the newcomers who constitute the five couples­­ -- for that would add credibility to their presence. The one noteworthy guy is Mohit who plays Salman and is the humour element. Any innovation or imagination in the film is restricted to its title.

LRC