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EDITOR'S PICK
`Maximum` a minimum-fuss crime drama
Rating:***
With a kind of brisk business-like immediacy and the least amount of fuss,
Maximum takes us into the world of shoot-out killings and the
internecine war in Mumbai`s police department which threatens to destroy the
very institution built to mend the wounds and fissures in the social fabric.
Writer-director Kabeer Kaushik seems to be a born minimalist. His earlier film
Saher was also steeped in the khaki colour.In Maximum,
the world of legally-enforced corruption is created with such a lack of
back-projection, history and vocalized subtexts that you often feel the director
takes his audience for granted.
This is not the case. Kaushik presumes that we are intelligent enough to enter
the murky morally ambivalent world of his characters without being led by the
hand.
Naseeruddin Shah, who plays a ruthless encounter cop Arun Inamdar, is introduced
to us when a victim lies bleeding in front of the cop. Characteristically the
director plunges into the scene of crime when the dark deed is done. We see
Inamdar watching the victim bleed to death and then pumping two bullets into the
chap to ensure there`s no unfinished business here.
This is a world of unmitigated immorality. Bullets are fired not to stop but to
merchanidise crime. And the lawmakers are shown to be as corrupt as the ones
they set out to nab and mend.
Pratap Pandit, as played by Sonu Sood, is a man of a few words, much action. We
are not given a chance to know him closely. He shifts gears so often we`re often
left looking briefly at gaping wounds that can never heal in our socio-political
system.
The narration assumes a peculiar pace. As guns roar and Daniel George plays out
an elegiac evocative background score to underline the senselessness of the
violence, we can see the characters` self imposed emptiness in the face of the
volatile noise that they`ve created around their lives. The hollowness hits you
in the head more than the heart. And when the emotions seize the plot in a
vice-like grip we feel terribly sorry for the characters for the death trap that
they`ve built for one another and finally themselves.
The film opens in 2003 at the height of the encounter killings in Mumbai. Two
encounter specialists played by Sonu and Naseer are at loggerheads.
Admirably the director doesn`t use the two principal characters to form a
central conflict. Kaushik`s narration is as ruthless and stripped of humour and
other sources of cinematic solace as the world his characters inhabit. A certain
amount of familiarity with the world of encounter killings is assumed on the
audiences` part. We are expected to understand the subverted value-system of the
encounter cops who do their social cleansing and in the process get so embroiled
in blood, their hands are soaked in the very blood that they are meant to wash
away.
Hence our `hero` Pratap (based on a real-life encounter specialist) is shown to
kill criminals, extort money from builders and businessman and hobnob with the
powerful and profance. And yet he returns home to a loving wife (Neha Dhupia)
and a daughter. The father-daughter scenes are done with a tremulous tenderness.
Sonu invests immense emotion in these scenes. His performance takes him through
several moral dilemmas. Years pass. Sonu`s body language expresses the
deplorable shift in power equations. Here`s a performance that again proves this
underrated actor`s unimpeachable versatility.
When you are slipping you either fight back or you keep quiet, he
tells his journalist-friend, played by Amit Sadh. They share keema-paoat an
Irani restaurant. As the years pass, earlier the cop paid, later the scribe
does. A subtle illustration of a power-shift that says so much about the
socio-economic equations of Mumbai.
The journalist`s character remains a kind of sutradhar. By the end of the film
we really don`t know who is in the crime folds for the money and who`s there for
the power.
Maximum is a film that`s far more in-charge of its out-of-control
sharp-shooting cops than it seems. Yes, there have been any number of films
about encounter cops. But this one gets at the underbelly of desolation and
isolation of such cops as effectively as Shimit Amin`s Ab Tak Chappan.
There are some brilliantly executed shootouts.
A layered sharp and sagacious look at the internecine world of encounter cops,
Maximum is a minimum-fuss crime drama where the characters are so
austere in their emotions they somehow seem to be constantly shadow-dancing with
their conscience.
The performances by Sonu and Naseer Shah propel the plot to a gripping summit.
But there isn`t enough of Naseer. Vinay Pathak as a Uttar Pradesh politician and
Amit as a journalist, both trying to make sense of Mumbai`s confounding
cosmopolitanism, add considerably to the film`s powerful personality.
For Sonu Maximum is a new beginning.
Maximum is a Hindi crime thriller film written and directed by Kabeer Kaushik.The project features Naseeruddin Shah,Sonu Sood,Neha Dhupia and Vinay Pathak in pivotal roles. The film, an Action Drama, encapsulates the journey of two Super Cops and their struggle for power. Maximum power. But they are not alone in this game. There are other players. The conspirators. Moving at every level. Taking the narrative through layers of emotions. Betrayals. And intense politics. To an unpredictable climax.