Synopsis:
Surjo (Jeet) is a brave, good and honest
boy living with his middle-class parents and little
sister. He is also a champion sprinter who bags
trophies in every sprinting event. His life takes
a 180-degree turn when he goes to Siliguri to
take part in a sprint championship. There, he
is shocked to discover that Sumi (Varsha), a local
girl, is being tortured and taken away against
her wishes by the goons of the local mafia lord,
Indrajeet (Subrata Dutta), with his mother Mahamaya
Sen’s (Anamika Saha) backing. Surjo rescues
the girl from their clutches and drives away with
her to Kolkata in Indrajeet’s own vehicle.
He hides her in his house without his parents
getting wise to her presence while Indrajeet files
a kidnapping complaint against Surjo. Sumi’s
mother and brother have already directed her to
fly away to her US-based uncle to get away from
Indrajeet. Surjo’s aim now is to see Sumi
fly off to the US and he arranges her visa and
ticket with the help of his friends. When his
parents learn of the stowaway hiding in their
own home, they join forces, as Indrajeet, his
mother and their goons get hot on the chase. Just
as Sumi steps into the airport to catch her flight,
Surjo realises that he has fallen in love with
the girl and the two ride back into town only
this time, for Surjo’s kid sister to be
kidnapped by Indrajeet. After lots of fisticuffs
in Indrajeet’s suburban bungalow to rescue
Surjo’s kidnapped sister, Indrajeet is accidentally
shot and killed by a bullet his mother aimed at
Surjo. She dies of shock. The film closes on the
familiar image of the group photograph with the
implicit understanding that Surjo and Sumi will
live happily ever after.
Is there a measuring rod to evaluate a film?
Is there a value system that distinguishes a good
film from a bad film? Or are these man-made categories
that are relative to person, time and place? Swapan
Saha is known as a quickie director in Tollygunge
who completes a film in 20 days flat and has an
average release rate of one film per month. He
does not care about press previews and is not
interested in a PR machine. He generally backs
out of interviews because he knows critics look
down on him as a director of ‘quack’
and quickie films. So, the critic who is thrust
with the job of reviewing a Swapan Saha film has
often to buy the ticket himself.
 When
the critic buys his ticket with his own money,
he watches the film with the full house a Swapan
Saha film commands. And his views are prone to
be influenced by the constant chain of cat-calls,
whistles, ceetees, loud cheering and clapping
every time the hero, be it Jeet or Prasenjeet
or Mithun, appears on screen. This is exactly
what happened to this critic. The hall was packed
to capacity. It was amazing to discover how deeply
the audience got involved in the goings-on as
Jeet strutted about in slow motion across the
screen in a panning shot, or, unclenched a fist
till, caught in close-up, one could actually see
blood flowing through the veins down the back
of his palm when he readied to give it good to
the wrong man at the right place and the right
time.
For once, Saha gives us a good-hearted hero who
has common traits of downing a beer or two with
his cronies at an adda and lying through
his teeth when he has to. For once, it is both
hilarious and good to discover a marriage registrar
persuading an eloping daughter to think twice
before jumping. For once, one encounters a good
hero who is not interested in a government job
his father urges him to do. For once, one gets
the chance of looking into the mind of a murderous,
gun-happy, schizophrenic villain go weak-kneed
and soft the minute he sets eyes on the girl of
his dreams.
The song-dance numbers are ridiculous. Saha does
not care one bit about the crowds gathered to
watch location shootings. Nor does he care to
smother the endless tears of Surjo’s mother
or stop the sweet-and-naughty kid sister act done
to death in the film. Indrajeet slaughters Sumi’s
widowed mother and older brother in cold blood
but Sumi does not seem to know or care. But these
are points of pure logic, which you must leave
outside the theatre before you step in. Saha needs
to be lauded for keeping away from sex, sexual
innuendo, rape attempts, bawdy humour and item
numbers. Because he still manages to reach his
audience, from frontbenchers to balcony-frequenters
and the ones in the middle. For a Swapan Saha
film, the audience sets an example in classless
democracy where the frontbenchers vie with the
balcony-hoppers in sending out those loud whistles
and louder claps. There is plenty of blood and
gore though but they are well-placed and orchestrated
to suit the plot of the film
Subrata Dutta is slick in his villainy and completely
credible in his weak-kneed act. Jeet as Surjo
has built up his muscles to suit those scenes
of unclenched fists and his song-dance acts have
gone up by notches. The action scenes are well
choreographed and convincing. Intimate love scenes
still however remain Jeet’s weak point.
Varsha as Sumi needs to perfect her diction but
otherwise is ok. For a change, Dipankar De has
a positive role and he does it brilliantly with
the right touch of wry humour, satire, and honesty.
Anamika Saha as Mahamaya Sen has stripped herself
of much melodrama to convince in a different role.
The cinematography is rather uneven, flat in the
indoor shots but beautiful in the outdoor ones
especially the picturesque hills capes of North
Bengal. Venkatesh’s music is nothing to
cheer about and the songs are neither well placed
nor well choreographed. The Bengali diction by
the male singers is plain atrocious. The song-dance
numbers have been put in for sheer box office
value.
But then, the entire film is targeted solely
at the box office and not at awards or film festivals.
So, what, pray, is a good film? A film that gets
back the money the producers have invested in
it several times over? Or, a film that wins accolades
at film festivals and awards on different platforms
but fails to pull in an audience? Zor
taught this critic one good lesson – that
the power of the audience is stronger and greater
than the power of the pen; that once in a while,
the critic needs to step down from that ivory
tower of snobbish criticism he/she feels is ‘intellectual’
and watch a film with the ones it has been made
for – the audience.
Shoma A Chatterji is a freelance journalist
who specialises in cinema and gender. She has
won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema
twice.
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