Badla (Movie Review)

 Sujoy Ghosh's 'Badla' Dampens The Friday Excitement!

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" Revenge is sweet and not fattening" -- Alfred Hitchcock

'Badla' as the word rightly suggest 'Revenge' is what you will find in Sujoy Ghosh's Friday outing with Amitabh Bachchan and Taapse Pannu. What is more interesting about the film is that it starts off as a gripping story of unravelling a murder mystery with a high profile ambitious businesswoman in question but unfortunately it turns out to be spiralling continuously nowhere. The one-room drama is so stretched that you fall sick in the darkness of the theatre unable to hear further the umpteen versions of the 'if and buts' of the possible reason and causes of the murder revolving around the suspect.

Amitabh Bachchan is at his verbal best as always and its nothing new for the audience. It is only for him that you can watch and bear the coffee table discussion of his with Tapsee Pannu on a murder mystery. The lengthy and boring discussion between an astute barrister Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) and his client and suspect Naina Sethi is many a time laughable and funny. A visibly uninterested Tapsee Pannu doesn't exhibit the calibre and talent she displayed in Pink and Mulk in this character as Naina Sethi.

 

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Naina Sethi (Tapsee Pannu) a high profile businesswoman is in an affair and is caught unaware in a life-changing event that turns her life topsy-turvy and she gets entangled into a web of crime that becomes nearly impossible for her to untwine. Badal Gupta a legal hawk who has never lost a legal battle in his career has agreed to take up his last case before his retirement on the request of his friend Jimmy (Manav Kaul) a legal advisor to Naina Seth.

Amrita Singh as Rani and her husband Nirmal (Tanveer Ghani) find themselves caught in the same web of Naina and are engaged devising ways and methods to solve the riddle of their missing son Sunny Singh Toor (Antonio Aakeel). Amrita Singh is nowhere near to her characters she played well in the recent past as  - Neena Wadhwa, Kavita Malhotra, Principal - in films like Aurangazeb, 2 States and Hindi Medium, respectively. Manav Kaul a talented actor has nothing much to do. He is made to mouth dialogues like 'Tum nervous nahi ho, tho mai Amitabh Bachchan hun" - God knows what he meant?

 

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Tony Luke the Malayalam actor who had been part of many Malayalam hits, has given a decent performance but doesn't leave much impact as Arjun who has a sneaky affair with Naina in Badla.

After a series of disastrous Fridays, Badla was a hope for many cinema lovers  but Sujoy Ghosh even after an official adaptation of a Spanish Film 'Contratiempo' (The Invisible Guest) made by Oriol Paulo fails to ignite the magic he created in the past with his much-discussed movies like Jhankar Beats,  Kahani, Kahani 2: Durga Rani and his short film Ahalya.

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The much talked about 'cameo' of Shahrukh Khan in Badla turned to be a rumour and probably a publicity stunt. The film has five original compositions but unfortunately, none of them strikes your fancy.  

In short, there is a dialogue by Amitabh Bachchan who tired of his client Naina Sethi's changing statements says "Your Character Starts Learning Anything At Any Point of Time and Starts Doing Things" this statement applies for the film and the filmmaker who made this movie.

Quoting Alfred Hitchcock once again and with an apology to him 'Sir this revenge story of Sujoy Gosh is fattening because one doesn't realize the number of tubs of popcorn and the number of Samosa he had with the extra cups of coffee he ordered to ward off his boredom.

PEN Movie Rating: 1.5/5

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan (Badal Gupta), Taapsee Pannu (Naina Sethi), Amrita Singh (Rani Kaur), Tanveer Ghani (Nirmal), Tony Luke (Arjun), Sheeba Chaddha (Beena), Brijendra Kala (Pandey), Abhay Deol (Aditya Kapoor), Antonio Aakeel (Sunny Singh Toor)

Genre: Crime Mystery Thriller

Director: Sujoy Ghosh

Producer: Gauri Khan, Sunir Khetarpal, Akshai Puri, Gaurav Verma

Written by: Sujoy Ghosh, Raj Vasant (Dialogues)

Screenplay: Sujoy Ghosh

Story: Oriol Paulo

Music by: Amaal Mallik, Anupam Roy, Clinton Cerejo

Cinematography: Avik Mukhopadhyay

Edited by: Monisha R Baldawa

Production Companies: Red Chillies Entertainment, Azure Entertainment

Distributor: AA Films, ZEE Studios

Release Date: 08 March, 2019

Duration: 118 Minutes

Language: Hindi