My take on Shootout at Lokhandwala
Hey was off the scene for a while. Me back again!
This has been a busy week particularly with regard to my film viewing schedules. Started with Life in a Metro which should have been named Sexual Life in a Metro as all Anurag Basu did was dwell on sleazy underbelly of corporate culture and human relationships. Fair enough, to each his own. The other film I watched was Shootout at Lokhandwala. Given a choice between romance and guns, I’d go for guns any day. The film comes hot on the heels of the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case grabbing headlines and eyeballs in the media. Less importantly are the Khwaja Yunus custodial death case and another fake encounter case in Gujarat that of Javed Sheikh who was gunned down in cold blood by the Rajasthan and Gujarat police in 2004. All three cases are preceded by a long and sordid history of fake encounter killings and the people with blood on their hands are the usual suspects – the police and the armed forces. Kashmir has seen the worst encounters over the past many years. Some of them find publicity and media coverage and become iconic while the rest (and the numbers are staggering) remain stacked in the dusty alleys of the establishment.
Was the Maya Dolas encounter in 1991 a real one? The Bombay High Court ruled in favour of the Anti-Terrorism squad being led by Aftab Ahmad Khan, which planned and executed the whole operation. Human rights activists and citizen’s group thought on the contrary. The encounter they said was a set-up. Khan had been on the D-gang payroll and had been sounded off after Dolas got too big for his boots. The families of the five men who were killed (and according to Shootout…quite brutally at that) petitioned the court saying that their children were killed for a crime they did not commit. However, all records (I have done some research on this) state that Dolas was indeed an extortionist who fell on the wrong side of Big Bhai in Dubai and was killed in a police encounter which involved loads 327 policemen and sophisticated weaponry and put the lives of close to 102 men, women and children living in the heavily populated Lokhandwala area on 16 November 1991 in danger.
The film does not provide answers to this vexing question. But is it supposed to? I don’t know. It is a film-director’s take on an incident, which has long been lauded as the longest encounter ever in the annals of the Mumbai Police. In portions, the screenplays veers towards hero-worship of the police officers involved in the operation, there are other sequences where the film-maker makes an attempt to provide a humane face to otherwise ruthless gangsters. It is much like a see-saw. The film begins with three large blood stains on the lane in front of Swati Building, the residential block which had housed the Maya and his boys for weeks and ends with the bloodied faces of the slain criminals. Was it correct to hound the men in the fashion that the Mumbai police chose to follow? The question is raised over and over again by a television reporter (played by Diya Mirza) fuelling an ideological and ethical debate.
My only problem with the film is the unnecessary and useless song and dance sequences and characters like the bar dancer (Aarti Chhabria) and Bua (Tusshar Kapoor). Kapoor not only failed to portray the sharpshooter to any devastating effect, his command over dialogues was grotesque. He should probably only stick to comic roles and leave the gangsta flicks to Vivek Oberoi. It was nice to see him come back into his own after the searing role in Company. He is superb as Mayabhai, the young extortionist who rebels against the D-Company. Rohit Roy is decent enough in a small role while Shabbir Ahluwalia, Ekta Kapoor’s blue-eyed boy makes a foray into Bollywood as RC, the young associate who cannot get over the fact that he murdered a family in cold blood.
Scenes to die for? Quite a few. ACP Shamsher Khan kills one of Maya’s cohorts (played by Aditya Lakhia) in front of the media, police, and Lokhandwala residents. It is effective, gory, and sets the pace for the rest of the sequence. But again it is difficult to judge the tenor of the filmmaker’s ideological leanings (whether in favour of the police or ethics in general) from this one scene; however it does raise a few questions about the methods the police uses to bring criminals to its knees. At one level the film propagates the infallibility of the police’s patriotism while on the other it raises a few uncomfortable queries about the fact that criminals too need to be treated like human beings and have rightful access to the institutions of law and justice. The verbal duel between Maya and ACP Khan too is well-shot and modulated. Dutt is a model cop – uncorrupted, patriotic, and dedicated and he does a brilliant job of his role (as usual).
Yes, one more thing. The presence of just too many stars from the commercial pantheon pulled the film back a bit. But who could have played Maya better than Vivek Oberoi?
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
The review I wrote in rediffmail.com
Hello to cast such a huge starcast u need dam and thinking film making mind which apoorva has. whats wrong with shoot out… its a very well made film. And SFA tereko review likhne ka bola tha actor logoke acting ke bare mein likhne nahin bola yedde. The reiview writer seems to be from a sheltered family bechara gang war ke baare mein kya janta hai. Had he seen the shot at lokhandwalla in reality susu kardiya hota. forget it lets talk about the film. The movie rocks it is a fiction reality check just watch it and enjoy the film without reading too much meaning into it. Vivek is outstanding as maya he was sanki like what vivek has enacted and Mr khan’s role is played to perfection by sanju baba all others did a fair job. Great attempt of projecting the scary reality on screen very well shot film. And pls don’t sit with magnifiying glasses when you watch films. Just watch it for pure entertainment.
It is not a documentary film it is very very commercial and do not go by this aedda review.
agree wid u on Metro…infidelity & and whole networking & criss-cross of sexual partners was too much…arrey yaar bade sheharon mein aur rishton mein sex aur shaadi ke alawa bhi kuch hota hai… why so much of negetivity?? acha bhi to ho raha hai duniya mein woh bhi to dikhao..
And i guess parents will stop their children from working in call centres after ‘Metro’..why only call centres.. agar aisa hota hai to har industry mein hota hai….even after all this movie was good…at least better than all the crap released around it..isnt it??
i agree
VIVEK rocked…
hope more and more filmmakers will give him diverse roles as he did earlier in his career – company, saathiya etc
JMD – Manan Singh KATOHORA
@Apurva, maine kab bola ki picture achchi nahi hai? I loved the film. That’s exactly why I wrote this piece…SAL rocks…the background score (forgot to mention it in the review) rocks too…and I say ‘MY Take’ at the outset….which means it is my take…to each his own…and by the way I would not have written this if I hadn’t been moved or affected by the film.
Has anyone read hundred strokes of brush before bed.. mellisa.p is the writer.. Indian cinema is just like mellisa.p, getting fucked with any fucker who comes to it..
have read it.. it was also made into a very bad film which also i have
Firstly, Metro – some of the threads in the film were engaging, primarily because of well written characters and the charm and wit with which they were essayed ( aka konkona, irrfan). But it is hard for me to be objective about the central “call center” thread because it is a scene for scene rip-off of the film “the apartment” (Billy Wilder, 1960) which was meant to be romantic comedy to begin with but with each year passing it seems more melancholy and tragic. Needless to say it is a beautiful film and “Metro” is unworthy and amateurish in comparison.
“Shootout…” is a weak and insipid and i’m not even debating the factual and political merit of the film, i’m considering it purely in a commercial masala context. Forget the build-up to the shootout, the shootout itself was a complete letdown – goddam extras driving up in 10-20 odd jeeps and shooting at walls to a techno music background sheesh. I was hoping (what with the brave new bollywood and what not) the film would end in a a blaze of bullets, blood and gore instead we have comical fisticuffs (which Mithun did much better back in the good ole 80s) followed by the quintessential courtroom anal sawal for us aam junta to ponder over on our drive back home. Please for chrissake’s show some imagination and balls if you wanna make a masala action film – what takes the cake is those stupid teary eyed phonecalls to mummy, papa, girlfriend etc before the *cough* shootout. I suggest all sanjay gupta, apoorva lakhia fans rent Chan Wook Park DVDs, i promise if nothing else you’ll save up on the Rs150 multiplex ticket for their present and forthcoming films.
does the merit of a film lie only in comparisons? what if i want to spend my hard earned 150 bucks on a film like Shootout…? everyone will agree that worse films are churned out by the Bollywood film factories every Friday. this film was far better than most. the cry-weepy scenes notwithstanding.
no, merit and comparison are two different things, you’ve taken my comment about renting DVDs out of context, it’s only a joke and of course you may spend your money anyway you wish.
>-
you’ve criticized me for comparing and then gone on to compare the film yourself with bollywood friday fare and said it’s far better than most.
Therefore honey, if you have anything to say about the relevant portions of my comment i’d luv to hear from you else forever hold your peace.
i m agree with u,but the indian films r made by the asses for the masses,that they remain burried under ignorence.
Roshini,
Your post sounds very pompous. First you dismiss METRO pejoratively as ‘Sexual Life in a Metro’. Then you cast aspersions on Anurag Basu as a film maker,and then you pretend largesse and say ‘fair enough’.
Your writing reflects narrow mindedness and cowardice. It is very surprising that you should be dismissive of a film that, with all its flaws, still explores urban sexuality in a very honest way. Or do i sense fear of exploring sexuality?
The use of the phrase ’sleazy underbelly’ is exceedingly inappropriate. What, pray tell, is ’sleazy’ about adults engaging in consensual sex? As far as i recall, the serial sex depicted in the film was NOT ‘exploitative’. Except for Kangana Ranaut’s character, who feels like she slept with the wrong man, and that too, nowhere is the relationship without her knowledge or consent.
The hypocrisy of this peice is revealed twice over. You said in a comment on Anurag Kashyap’s peice on Metro that you will definitely see it, and you have such a reaction after you actually see it. What do you think of Anurag Kashyap now? Don’t hero-worship him as much, aye? I read you other peices where you are obsessively mooning over him. What sort of a cinemaphile are you?
On the other hand, you have no qualms exploring violence. However, there appears to be no trace of abhorrence in that. Violence, guns and gore are almost raised on a pedestal.It is not uncommon to be fascinated with various societal aspects of violence, but to apothesise it is quite another.
The same myopia is reflected in your peice on RDB. Glaringly missing among the so-called ’socialist’ analysis is any deliberation on violence. Not all socialists are in favour of use of violent methods, i hope you know that since you claim to be a socialist.
To explore cinema, it is absolutely important to keep one’s mind open. I laud your passion for cinema, but you need to become a lot more mature to be able to see things clearly. Dismissiveness is not the hall mark of any budding academician.
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title ke on Shootout at Lokhandwala : PassionForCinema. Thanks for informative article