Subhash K. Jha speaks about Bhindi Baazaar Inc

By Subhash K. Jha -

June 18, 2011 - 3:19 AM IST

You can take the gangster out of Mumbai. But you really can't take Mumbai out of the gangster genre of cinema. How many films have we seen where young people from the seamier side of Mumbai's notorious underbelly get into the world of crime and other furtive pleasures?

Subhash K. Jha speaks about Bhindi Baazaar Inc

Let's not make a list of the underworld films, recent and remote which Bhindi Baazaar Inc echoes. Suffice it to say this one too shakes you, sometimes to the core. It is gritty edgy tactile and earthy, filled with actors who look unwashed, unshaven brazen and brash enough to pass off as real gangsters in Mumbai's crowded roads.

Gun's the word. The only language that these people speak is the language of violence. As one of the semi-pivotal characters with wounds bruises and fractures says, "What difference does it make whether it's the public, police or colleagues? I am used to the thrashing." That sense of expected violence at the pit of the stomach runs through the film's underbelly.

Bhindi Baazaar Inc serenades a genre which has been done to brutal death in Bollywood. Sex here is for barter â€¦and for worse. Take it or leave it. In an episode echoing Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool with vigorous temerity the ganglord's recruit kills his own mentor and sleeps with the woman that the mentor was lusting after.

Recall the Pankaj Kapoor-Tabu-Irrfan Khan axis in Maqbool. Shakespeare meets Ram Gopal Varma. You'd immediately see where Ghalib Asab Bopali's 'scream'play in Bhindi Bazaar is coming from. Replete with rugged references to the tradition of Mumbai cinema's enduring allegiance to gangsterism, Bhindi Baazaar Inc moves at an even trot.

Bolstered by hard-hitting images of violence (and boy, the character do the hittingâ€¦hard!) the narration warms up menacingly towards a heated climax.

Yes, the corruption and eruption, the depravity and debauchery are only to be expected in an underworld saga. To be honest, the brutality of debutant director Ankush Bhatt's Savage People is all too familiar.Bhatt seeks inspiration from the great raconteurs of gangsterism Ram Gopal Varma,for starters. It isn't originality that gives this work its bearings and resonances. It's the way the familiar congregation of the scruffy and the savage people are packaged and projected that keeps us riveted.

At the helm of the pulsating proceedings are the two pickpocket friends. Prashant Narayanan (excellent) and newcomer Gautam Sharma (confident) remind us of Dev Patel and Ankur Vikal in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire and Sharman Joshi and Farukh Kabir in Allah Ka Banday.

While resonantly echoing all these violent predecessors Bhindi Baazaar Inc manages to stand its own two feet. Director Ankush Bhatt keeps the blood and fury rolling out in reams of ricocheting images denoting a life lived on the edge of self-destruction. The performances range from the grand (Pavan Malhotra) to the awkward (some of the female actors could do with a crash course in acting).The romantic and erotic sequences are clumsy. And some attempts to shock through dialogues and visuals are too blatant.

But the plot finally holds together. The blood-soaked streets, the mean circumstances and the meaner social outcasts all come together in a bracing bloodbath that could be accused of being jaded in theme but not lacking in vitality and vigour.