Awarapan Movie Reviews

It's a black-black world!

Films coming from the stable of Vishesh Films usually have a dark element in it. But AWARAPAN takes the word 'dark' even further and easily turns out to be one of the darkest films that the immensely production house has produced. Not that the film looses out on sheen due to this. In fact it is quite entertaining in spite of a theme that is truly black with barely any gray elements.

No one is a hero out here. No one is a villain too. They are all characters, howsoever clichéd it all may sound. So Ashutosh Rana, a hotelier/gang lord, loves his blue eyed boy [Emraan] so much that he is doesn't let his own son talk to him on high pitch. Mrinalini, his mistress from Pakistan, shares his bed but has her heart going for fellow Pakistani [Rehan Khan] who flies over to Hong Kong to take her away. Shaad Randhawa promises to die for his friend [Emraan] but one weak moment makes him turn a back-stabber.

And Emraan himself? Well he is a hotelier, gangster and a killer - all rolled into one! An atheist and a trusted lieutenant of Rana, he hasn't smiled ever since he loved and lost his first and only love [Shreya Saran] years back.

A no-nonsense man who truly leads a life filled with 'awarapan', his character is sad, depressing and helpless and needs a reason to live. But this very reason to live makes him walk towards death as he decides to free Rana's mistress from the cage and in the process turns a believer in God!

If one has a close look at the plot of AWARAPAN, it is not just about good v/s evil, love v/s hatred or freedom v/s entrapment. It also a stream of spirituality running throughout the narrative which only comes to fore even stronger in the second half when Emraan has a close shave with death and finds that there are lot more reasons to look forward towards life.

The film completely belongs to Emraan Hashmi. It is a pleasant surprise to see the young actor perform with a kind of maturity that would otherwise be associated with someone who has more than a decade's experience in the industry. He is flawless from start till the finish of the film and makes an excellent impact in each of the scenes. He has hardly a few dialogues to speak but his facial expressions, something for which he has been criticized for most of his career, do the job. His stylist needs to get a 10/10 everything from his hair to the costumes go well with his character.

There are number of sequences where Emraan is simply commendable. Watch him get hysterical at the graveyard, get anxious at the interval scene or stare at the face of death when he is being buried alive - you are sure to get a lump in the throat. This is truly an award winning performance.

Ashutosh Rana does well too as a suave man who has a strong human side to him in spite of being in evil business. Soft spoken and restrained, his character is menacing and one can make out this performance truly belongs to the kind that one expects from a Bhatt film. On the other hand one feels bad about Ashish Vidyarthi hardly having a part to play in the film as he is terribly wasted.

The other performance that is sure to catch eyeballs is that of Shaad Randhawa. Though he tended to get a little over the top in his debut film WOH LAMHE, in AWARAPAN he is a complete natural and has ample screen time as Hashmi's best buddy. A vulnerable young man who has to choose between the ladder towards success and his friend, his character takes various shades right till the end.

Purab Kohli as Rana's drug-addict nephew is a delight to watch every time he appears on screen. Ditto for another young man who plays Rana's son. With so many young actors and raw talent at his disposal, Mohit Suri gives each of them good screen time to justify their presence in the plot. The same cannot be said though for Rehan Khan who plays Mrinalini's closet lover and is hardly there.

Amongst the leading ladies Mrinalini has more screen time and though she looks good throughout, in acting department she is fine but not mind blowing. From Bhatt films, one expects women actors to eat up the screen, especially in an author-backed role like this. But that's not the case either with Mrinalini or Shreya Saran, who looks cute and good as an all-covered-up Rajasthani Muslim girl.

Apart from Hashmi, two other things that one takes home are fillm's songs and cinematography. 'Tera Mera Rishta' is clearly one of the most haunting tracks that one has heard for a long-long time and it's constant presence in the film as Hashmi fights the outer and inner devils is sure to resonate for weeks to come. Both indoor as well as the outdoor locations of Hong Kong and Bangkok are captured quite well by the cameraman as he shoots the film in black shades throughout to go with the theme of the film.

Mohit Suri's ZEHER and KALYUG may have been termed as purely masala entertainers but WOH LAMHE had proved that he could tell a hard hitting sensitive tale too. AWARAPAN takes a different route as the story which seemed like an action entertainer on the face value has a lot more to tell if looked deep inside. The entire realization of presence of divine power, either in the outside world or the inner self, is brought out beautifully that proves yet again that Mohit Suri is a film maker who has something new to tell in each of his flicks.