Spot the difference. It's the same in all apparent details. Mumbai's underworld
caught in a compromising position by Ram Gopal Varma (RGV)'s prying probing restless camera into
Subhash K Jha speaks about Satya 2the mutilated lives of characters looking so scruffy and aggressive you wish they would leave
aside the bloodbath and just take a bloody bath.
Yup, this is ostensibly a very familiar RGV territory. But hang on. There is something very
different going on here. Strikingly rich and articulate in production design Satya 2 is a
startling original take on the evolution, collapse and restoration of Mumbai's underworld in
ways that question the economical paradigm of a nation on the brink of damnation.
Yes, we are talking about apna watan Hindustan where crime and corruption grow in direct
proportion to the apathy of the powers that be. Given the incredible leap in atrocities against
the 'un-empowered' (to coin an anti-capitalistic phrase) where does the poorest of the poor go
when his daughter gets gang-raped, his wife dies of adulterated medicine and his father cannot
get his right Rs 500 pension without paying a bribe?
Stop right here. RGV's film shows a devilish daring. It takes the underworld into confidence to
build an anti-corruption empire that would feed the fed-up by paralyzing the super-privileged.
It's a startling premise, and one that RGV is not able to work out into any tenable blueprint of
socio-political reform. But the very fact that he is able to suggest a solution, no matter how
implausible, to the current climate of desperate de-escalation of morality, is reason enough to
applaud this flawed but riveting drama of the doomed and the dangerous.
Beware of the hopeless. They have nothing to lose except their despair. This is the propelling
premise of RGV's neo-Satya's plot. The narration is most of the time taut and tactile as
we follow the new-millennium Satya's journey from a village in Rajasthan to the vortex of
gansterism in Mumbai. Ironically, the police force which is sturdily represented in the film
doesn't seem any different in its activities from the underworld.
There is one bitingly savage satirical interrogation sequence where the cops transmit electrical
shocks to Satya's best friend Naara (Amritriyaan) for information on the mysterious 'Company'
that Satya has formed. During interrogation Satya's friend dies and the interrogating cop
thrashes the man who was handling the electrocution for overdoing it. Almost like an irate
reveller blaming the deejay for the messed-up music.
You never know when that thin line dividing life from death and wrong from right
is crossed. For all his swaggering self-appointed role as a messiah of the downtrodden Satya's
enigmatic empire comes crashing down, as it always does in all the movie-made morality tales.
Yup, it's a familiar world of damnation and retribution. RGV gives the saga of gangsterism a new
spin creating for the underworld genre of cinema an entirely new formula and folklore of
survival. Gone are those crazy camera angles in RGV's recent films that left us dizzy and
disoriented. Vikas Sharaf's cinematography captures Mumbai is stunning sepia tones suggesting
decadence and rebirth in the same range of vision.
Visually Satya 2 is RGV's smartest and most eye-catching film in years. The shootouts on
the streets of Mumbai that been done to bludgeoning death in the past here acquire a new life.
The sequence where Satya is shot at in an open cafeteria is especially brilliant in the way the
editor cuts to the chase without getting out of breath. The under-construction buildings, a
favourite haunt of filmy gangsters is shot here with vigorous virility.
Some of the killings and torture sequences are gut-wrenching, and one gang-slaying of a rapist
(non-sexual gang rape?) would have you diving under your seat.
But then, life is not for the squeamish. Not now. Not ever.
So many years after Satya spoke a new cinematic language RGV is back in form displaying
the sparks of brilliance that made the first Satya film a trendsetting experience. No
relation to the earlier film except the one of Bhai-giri, Satya 2 sneaks slyly into
Mumbai's dark dangerous sinister and ominous underbelly. RGV's eye for the migrant's dismantled
soul is unerring and powerful.
The performances range from the reined-in to the embarrassingly over-the-top. In the title role
Puneet Singh Ratn's restrained intensity aids the work's aura of karmic catastrophe.
Puneet is no Chakravarthy. And this Satya is a very distant blood brother to the other Satya.
Thank God for that.
More Pages: Satya 2 Box Office Collection , Satya 2 Movie Review
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