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Monday, September 16, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD HASEENA PARKAR
EDITOR'S PICK
'Haseena Parkar' survives the curse of a clunky lead (Review By Subhash K.
Jha ; Rating: ****)
If only Haseena Parkar didn't suffer from the curse of clunky, inept, shoddy
central performance, it would have been a far more watchable potboiler on
gangsterism. And I use the word "potboiler" with all due respect. It's not easy
to make a massy masala movie out of the mayhem and murkiness of the mafia
kingdom.
Rahul Dholakia's "Raees" earlier this year wedded crime and kitsch. Apoorva
Lakhia does it with a fair share of elan and chutzpah.
"Haseena Parkar" is about that Dubai-based gangster who allegedly ran his
nefarious business activities in Mumbai through his sister in the 1990s.
The brother and the sister had themselves a blast.
Fortuitously, Lakhia doesn't miss Da-wood for the trees.
The carefully charted journey of Haseena Parkar secretes enough enigma mystery
intrigue dread uncertainty fear and blood to keep us watching for two hours.
Fasahat Khan shoots the shoot-outs and the volatile shindigs in shades of
sinister death. For better or for worse, Lakhia keeps the pacing frenzied,
almost ruinously so. Barely are the characters given a chance to breathe their
frustration and rage into a system that is so corrupt it fosters criminality.
The uneven pacing pumped up with a pounding background score clearly indicates
the director's massy intentions. And no harm in that. If only Lakhia's principal
lead had insight into what she was supposed to do.
Shraddha Kapoor slides cluelessly through the various lies and lives of Haseena
Parkar with a complete absence of inner conviction. Her performance is so
surface-level, I wondered if I've seen a more sorry instance of miscasting in
recent times.
The unknown actress (Priyanka Setia), who plays the public prosecutor in the
interestingly constructed courtroom scenes, effortlessly steals every frame from
the female lead. Haseena's lawyer, played by Rajesh Tailang, is equally
compelling. And Ankur Bhatia as Parkar's husband is suitably filmy flamboyant
and fleeting in his brief role. The rest of the teeming cast barely gets a
chance to register in the bloodsplattered storytelling.
Shraddha's Haseena is a whiney, self-important, delusional trouble-shooter.
Siddhant Kapoor's Dawood is better, more roundly shaped probably because the
actor is required largely to speak on the phone to a sister whom he repeatedly
extends a helping hand, and not in the way other siblings do.
It's Dawood's ambivalent role in his sister's life -- did he play a hand in
empowering her criminal activities in Mumbai or did she compel him to stay away
from her affairs? That provides a sizeable leeway to the narrative. Those who
have seen Lakhia's riveting "Shootout At Lokhandwala", would know the director
loves gangster shootouts.
In "Haseena Parkar", the shootouts are more cinematic and staged, less real and
documentary like. The emphasis is on generating a gratuitous excitement.
In this endeavour, the narrative sometimes loses its hold on the characters'
moral campus, letting them spin in their own web of deceit rather than pull them
out of their discrepancies to make sense of their outlawed lives.
If only the central performance was more credible, "Haseena Parkar" would have
been a film on female gangsterism on a par with Shabana Azmi's "Godmother".
I bring up Vinay Shukla's "Godmother" because I saw Shabana Azmi in Shraddhaa's
character in the way she tries to instil maternal sanctity into her truant son's
criminal leanings, even in the way she occupies masculine space on screen
physically.
But it's like watching a shadow dance rather than a real character.
Shraddha drags the film down. That it still has the energy and power to propel
itself into a frenzy of engaging encounters and conflicts is a measure of the
film's writing heft and the directora¿s grip over the grammar of gore.
Actor Siddhanth Kapoor says there is no competition with his
sister and actress Shraddha Kapoor and that he is very proud of her.
Asked if there was any competition with Shraddha because both belong to the same
industry, Siddhanth told IANS from Mumbai: "(There is) no competition with my
sister. I really do not see it like that. I think every brother who has a sister
doing so well will always be proud no matter what. I am always just so proud of
my sister."
The brother-sister duo featured together in the film "Haseena
Parkar", which aired on &Pictures onRead More
Shraddha Kapoor's last few releases, including "OK Jaanu", "Half Girlfriend" and "Haseena Parkar", failed to elicit expected response.Read More
