Lanka - Review

A film less than two hours and yet you get bored - that tells you whether or not you should watch the film. But, here go the details, anyway.

Bored with the story because it just won't move. Whatever needs to be said about the characters is said in the first 25-30 minutes and that too in slow motion. After that, it's just a wait for the inevitable to happen. Sure, there could have been some interest generated by how it transpires, but not here. There are a few twists leading up to the predictable climax, but what good are twists if you can catch up with them between power naps. No, I didn't sleep, but it'd have been so easy to.

Bored with the mostly uni-dimensional characters and the monotonous performances. Jaswant Sisodiya (Manoj Bajpayee) is a egomaniacal political hoodlum you'd love to hate. Manoj Bajpayee does invoke disgust towards Jaswant but you get used to that revulsion towards him soon enough. He also thinks of his obsession for Anju as his love for her. Anju (Tia Bajpai) is the damsel in distress and pretty much stays so. There is no attempt whatsoever to show her pathos except for the one mandatory scrubbing-her-rape-off shower scene. Other than that, it is her silence and voiceover that we have to interpret as sadness. And who knows, maybe you do go dead in face and voice if you've been sexually exploited the way she has been.

The third angle in the triangle is that of character-who-is-not-named Arjan Bajwa who enjoys the most layered character of them all and this is not saying much. His demonic anger gets to struggle between gratitude towards Jaswant aka bhai-sahaband empathy for Anju, which in turn makes him, rediscover his human-side.

Even though it can be argued that the characters sound interesting, the problem is that what I have said in these two paragraphs is all that there is to them. Add to that the dramatization due to an OD of slow-motion and loud background music.

What's a story about women being exploited in the little towns of India without showing too much of the one woman it's talking about let alone a glimpse of other such women? If you haven't evoked an emotion for the protagonist, how can you make me feel anything for the issue?