Just because dark is trending, doesn't mean everyone has to make it. Dark cinema is an art and it's not just about violence, blood, gore, and sex. It might be a demand of the cinema but bigger demand is a better script. It is to be realized and that realization has to come from within. Kushan Nandy tries his hand on this part thriller-part revenge drama which he probably wanted to look like 'Gangs of Wasseypur', but couldn't make it happen.
Set in some fictional part of UP where politics is power and laws are to be played with, where living is hard but killing is easy, lies the central character of Babu Bihari – who is a contract killer. He is killing people and is happy until one day when he finds out Banke, a new age contract killer who is a fan and a self- proclaimed student of Babu. They share an unusual bond on the screen as friends, guru- chela, and competitors, which leads to various twists and turns in the story.
The problem with this movie is that it tries to do many things in little time, but at the same time, it forgets that a movie can be good with a simple storyline too. It tries to feed a forced realism to viewers and in the process introduces so many unnecessary twists that even Abbas-Mastan will question their existence.
The plot is so weak that actors leave their characters halfway through the movie. Just hurling abuses can never make a character powerful, you have to impart that fear too. Divya Dutta fails to do that in her negative role and so does Anil George. Lead characters are nothing extraordinary too; be it Bidita Bag or Jatin Goswami. Even Nawazuddin, he isn't bad though but he has set the bar so high for himself that it wasn't even half of his potential. His dialogue delivery is good but it does not at any point lift the mood of the film. He is an actor par excellence but he should know that Indian audience is ruthless, it's just a matter of one more movie and he can be stereotyped. The only actor who somehow leaves his impact is Bhagwan Tiwari as the cop. Although he has played a similar role in Masaan, but rising above a bad story is hard and he does that here.
The only good scene in the movie is when Babu and Banke discuss inflation and their fees of killing people, just like people with a perfectly normal job would do. Another good thing about the movie is its music.
I'm quite open to cinema which has violence and abuses but it should be tied tight with the thread of a powerful story. You cannot just throw around abuses and call it black humour. Just adopting the language and law(-lessness) of land doesn't make a movie authentic or realistic, it just makes it a rich man's Gunda and a poor man's GoW. I know I don't want to say this but if only the movie was half as good as its first poster design, it would have worked. Unfortunately, it was so dull that even Nawazuddin couldn't save it; for me at least.
