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This movie is—if I may term it so—a disgrace to the two films we have seen with the tagline Ek Prem Katha. The first was the exceptional Gadar—Ek Prem Katha in 2001, which had the highest footfalls for any Hindi film in that entire decade, and the second was Toilet—Ek Prem Katha in 2018, a hard-hitting look at a social problem.
This film makes little sense in its narration: as a Prem Katha (love story) it is wonky from the start. The hero is a Dalit (backward caste) who turns into a Dacoit (brigand) of a weird kind. There are completely garbled paths taken both by the love story and the crime angle.
Hari (Adivi Sesh) loves Saraswati, who he addresses as Juliet (Mrunal Thakur). But Hari is from a lower caste and needs also to be financially sound. As is often the case, the Dalit girl Malli (Kamakshi Bhaskaria) in whose house he stays, is raped by Juliet’s brother (with his cronies) and Hari kills him. Juliet gives false evidence that Hari is a murderer, and Malli cannot tell the truth. Hari is jailed. A sympathetic prisoner, Ishaaq (Atul Kulkarni) ingeniously (and fancifully, speaking in terms of logic) arranges their escape and now Hari only wants revenge.
It’s pandemic time and a hospital chief (Prakash Raj) and a coterie are siphoning massive funds from helpless relatives of patients, and Hari decides to steal that money to emigrate to safety in Dubai. He realizes that Juliet has married in the interim, has a daughter and a husband (Vaibhav Tatwawadi) who is severely ill. She needs big money for his heart transplant.
The rest of the saga is about how he enrolls Saraswati in his plans, plotting to make her the stool pigeon in the massive heist should his plans go awry. A determined disgraced cop, inspector Swamy (Anurag Kashyap) has been assigned to kill or arrest the escaped convict. As with Om Puri in a similar role in the 180-degree opposite (in caliber) films Ghayaland Gupt, he soon realizes that Hari is the wronged one. Meanwhile Saraswati tells Hari why she had to lie in court, and he decides to give her the money instead of using it to flee. Why? That’s the first twist. Then come a second.
The frenzied turnarounds in the script, the illogic in many a sequence and the endless mayhem ultimately test patience in a lon-o-on-g 152 minutes of torture for the viewer. The flashbacks that are intermittent add to the confusion and the ennui.
Keeping up with the now-obsolete “tradition” of showing characters from all religions possible, we have, besides the Dalit representation, a noble Muslim in Ishaaq, a crooked hospital honcho whose name is Solomon (Christian or Jew?) and of course Hindus of all levels (Swamy is a noble upper-caste Brahmin). But the story and screenplay (penned by Shesh himself with director Shaneil Deo) make for an agonizing and boredom-inducing narrative that never seems to end.
As director, Shaneil handles a few romantic sequences well but the overall effort is weak in both intent and execution. As a film, it simply lacks connect. And while the technical side is adequate, the background score by Gyaani is needlessly deafening. No song (Bheem Ceciroleo) leaves any audio, visual or audiovisual impact.
Adivi Sesh is patently sincere but could have done much better. Mrunal Thakur too is generally ho-hum, a shockingly uncharacteristic thing to happen to a very talented actor. Sunil as the cop is wasted, ditto Kamakshi Bhadoria, who goes de-glam as Malli.
I have always said that Anurag Kashyap is a better actor than director (he has been confessed to me with several witnesses that he makes deviant films only because he cannot make the kind of mainstream cinema that works) and he is quite amusing as Swamy. Vaibhav Tatwawadi is good in his limited role. Prakash Raj has nothing to do.
The same goes for Atul Kulkarni, who is wasted, for normally a project in which he stars in Hindi usually has standard. Zayn Marie Khan is one of those unknown “nepo-kids” (she is director Mansoor Khan’s daughter!) and hardly has a role to speak of, but her expressive eyes work wonders within the constraints.
Essentially, this film is a sheer waste of time.
Rating: ** (Just About!)
Annapurma Studios present S.S. Creations’ & Suniel Narang Productions’ Dacoit—Ek Prem Katha Produced by: Supriya Yarlagadda Director: Shaniel Deo Written by: Adivi Sesh, Shaneil Deo & Yash Eshwari Music: Bheem Ceciroleo Starring: Adivi Sesh, Mrunal Thakur, Atul Kulkarni, Sunil, Zayn Marie Khan, Prakash Raj, Anurag Kashyap, Kamakshi Bhaskaria, Vaibhav Tatwawadi & others
