Pradeep Sarkar seems to have lost his way after his charmingly subtle debut.
Stumbling from genre to genre, churning out bucketfuls of banality, it's hard to believe that the once-budding filmmaker who showed such competence, such sophistication with Parineeta would call the shots for a staggeringly inept rip-off that gleans its ideas from the enjoyable Hollywood twaddle, Taken.
Except that, when hell freezes over, Mardaani isn't enjoyable. Twaddle, though, it certainly is.
Leastways, Taken didn't pretend to be what it definitely wasn't, and proudly stuck to being a crackpot cash-grab which made the film easy to assimilate. Mardaani proceeds to be a crafty charade without an ounce of tangible sentiment infusing its audacious plot. There's no avidity to neatly etch its mundane characters or carve out a rational plot, but a desperate hunger to plunge straight into its gritty subject matter.
While the film is insatiably enthusiastic to present itself as a stringent voice on sex-trafficking, it hardly makes any noteworthy attempt to tackle it in a pragmatic, perceptive way, like any levelheaded person would. Making the audiences cringe violently at the exploitative, brusque and horrific depiction of the treatment the girls sold into prostitution are subjected to would patently fetch the right kind of response, plausibly the one that is pined for, but it comes of as a rather manipulative attempt to hide one's own ineptitude.
The intentions, though greatly admirable, aren't backed by a pragmatic script, but by a hollow, laughably quixotic one. A tiny hint of authenticity would have been quite helpful in reminding me I was watching a film that was - probably - trying valiantly to be aberrant, but it was lacking. And how sad is that, in a film dealing with a grave subject that demands eyeballs promptly, they just couldn't resist skipping the materialistic elements that show up uninvited in the second-half.
As far as my knowledge goes, I'm not aware of a cop who would brashly pursue a potential suspect without necessary reinforcements. Or a trivial lowlife who would take on a senior cop with such impudence. Or the one-person squad who, like a sunny cliche it is, singlehandedly exterminates an entire operation in a tick in the fantastical denouement. What I am aware of is that I am watching a film that isn't taking my comprehension of the subject as earnestly as I wish it would. Which flusters me.
Without the crisp performances from its largely able cast, Mardaani would have slumped immutably. What it is, is a wily commercial venture masquerading as a thoughtful, diligent scrutiny of a subject seldom explored in the film industry. It screamed for a pinch of the ace perceptiveness of Mira Nair's magically moody Salaam Bombay!. And there simply wasn't any.
The question we ought to be asking ourselves is : does a well-intentioned film merit the tag of being an accomplished film? Are we too liberal with that tag?
For me, Mardaani was nothing more than a splendid, preposterous facade.
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