Kashyap has come up with a dark film which exposes the dark underbelly of Mumbai in the most realistic manner! Read the full movie review…
This morning when I saw the short film, Kali Katha, which is a prelude to the story of Ugly, I was highly intrigued to find out what will happen next. I kept wondering as to what Kali’s character would be like? How does she get kidnapped? Who would have done it? Well, in the evening when I saw the film, I not only had the answers to these questions but was also left with a brilliant cinematic experience.
When I entered the theatre, people were busy chatting and messaging on their phones, but Anurag Kashyap’s brilliant execution of the film commanded pin-drop silence. Not a single person fidgeted with his phone or got distracted by anything else, so hooking was the film. So without any further delays, here’s my view point on the film…
The Plot: Shalini (Tejaswini Kolhapure) is a middle-class housewife forced to stay at home by her second husband, police-chief Shoumik Bose (Ronit Roy). She considers suicide, and is about to shoot herself in the head with her husband’s gun when she is interrupted by her daughter, Kali (Anishika Shrivastava). Unaware of her mother’s activity, Kali asks her mother to call her estranged father, Shalini’s ex-husband, Rahul (Rahul Bhat). It’s a Saturday, and Kali’s day with her father as decided in the custody agreement from the divorce. Rahul, an aspiring actor struggling to make it big, comes to take Kali for a drive but ignores her in favour of phone calls made to try to further his career. Finally, Rahul leaves Kali alone in the car to go to an audition and to check in with his agent, Chaitanya (Vineet Kumar Singh). When he returns to the car, Kali is missing. Rahul first searches for Kali through the police, Chaitanya in tow. The local police-captain, Jadhav (Girish Kulkarni), does not take Rahul seriously until he realizes that Kali is the stepdaughter of the police-chief. Bose, out of hatred for Rahul, orders Jadhav to accuse Rahul of the kidnapping and torture both Rahul and Chaitanya to interrogate and punish them. A game of one-upmanship follows as Rahul and Bose search for Kali while simultaneously attempting to upstage the other.
Had the plot been just till here, it would have been a different story and wouldn’t have been named Ugly. But the plot thickens hereafter as the dark side of the characters surfaces.
What’s hot: The performances are superb. Rahul Bhat and Tejaswini Kolhapure are back with a bang and fit in the mould of their characters perfectly. As for Ronit Roy, he was just plain mind blowing. His angry cop stint left me speechless. Then there was Vineet Kumar Singh, whose portrayal of a casting director couldn’t have been better. Not just the main actors, even the actors with lesser screen time like Girish Kulkarni, Siddhant Kapoor, Surveen Chawla have performed very convincingly.
The story is very gripping and the absence of songs leaves no room for interruption. The realistic portrayal of the Mumbai underbelly gives you an insight into the filmmaker’s acute scrutiny.
Even the background score is very timely and ups your curiosity, thereby, aiding your visual pleasure. It’s quirky, loud and very apt for every shot.
If you are lucky enough you will see Alia Bhatt in the film too, but in a blink and miss appearance.
Whats not: The first half of the film is longer than the second half. The movie also seems to have been chopped a lot at the Censor Board tables. So the flashback scenes which were shot extensively were removed and kept to a bare minimum. It doesn’t spoil the flavour of the film, but had those scenes had still been part of the film, it would have been much more interesting.
The end is a bit abrupt. However, it works in favour of the film as the audience is left wanting for more.
Verdict: I went to watch this film not having much expectations from it, but Anurag Kashyap won me over with his storytelling and direction. If you are a lover of good cinema and if you can handle dark, raw truths of the society, then this is a must watch. It is worth every penny spent!
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