REVIEW: Mardaani

SUPER COP

There's something very satisfying about Pradeep Sarkar's Mardaani. Not just that it has a female protagonist but one who is truly empowered and doesn't get compromised by the filmmaker at any point either to make her rise heroically from the ashes as in the Zakhmi Aurat-type revenge melodramas laced with exploitative situations or even to underscore the villain's menace. She isn't run down by her bosses, ridiculed by co-workers or lectured by her husband for being the cause of his suffering or putting family at risk in the pursuit of criminals.

Which gives Shivani Shivaji Rao (Rani Mukerji) the rare freedom to do her job without any external pressures and she does just that—focussing on a single case through the course of the film: busting a gang of drug and child traffickers who have kidnapped, among others, Pyaari, the 12-year-old friend of Shivani's niece. Pyaari sells flowers for a living but also goes to school and is conversant in English—it’s a lovely touch, the unlikely friendship between girls from very different backgrounds. The niece too is an orphan and it could well have been her in Pyaari's place, except she's safe at home with her inspector aunt unlike Pyaari who lives in an orphanage from where she's abducted days before her birthday.

When Shivani finds out she doesn't fly into a rage or rough up the insensitive superintendent for not caring about the child's fate. Instead she immediately starts gathering information on the gang's activities. Not long after she's on the phone with a young man (Tahir Raj Bhasin) who calls himself ‘Walt’ after the anti-hero of the American series Breaking Bad, and the apparent kingpin of this kidnapping gang. They speak to each other with quiet menace in the vein of Hollywood thrillers. But the voice never rattles her enough to do something stupid. Not even when her doctor husband (Jisshu Sengupta) is roughed up and humiliated by goons under a false pretext. We see the couple sitting together at the dining table and all the husband can do to express his frustration is break a dinner plate. Her adversary calls just then and again instead of making a declamatory speech Shivani promises to have him arrested within a month.

That’s the first half, a neat set-up for a thriller of modest ambitions. You see the other minor players—the pimp, the brothel madam, the lascivious buyers and the pathetic faces of the girls, humiliated and tortured before being paraded with a token number hanging around their necks. None of it is over-stated for titillation. Anil George who played Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s porn filmmaker brother in last year’s Miss Lovely shows up as a slimy lawyer and business partner of the savvy kingpin.

Everything works out just fine all the way till the climax which, while being very filmi (from the elaborate explanation to the fist-fight), is definitely cathartic. You want to see the cop beat up this heartless criminal and you want his victims to clobber him senseless. And because Sarkar’s film doesn’t promise anything more, you’re happy with what he’s offering. Shivani is no Chulbul Pandey (and thank goodness for that). She says so herself, as if shrugging off the easy stereotyping. She’s just a boring cop doing her job with as little fuss as possible. And even if Mukerji doesn’t look tough she’s a good enough actress to compensate for her petite frame with an engaging performance.

It’s good to have her back.