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Star cast: Subrat Dutta, Neela Gokhale, Swara Bhaskar, Pranay Narayan.
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What’s Good: The emotional scenes.
What’s Bad: The lack of novelty in the subject.
Verdict: MADHOLAL KEEP WALKING will get out of breath at the box-office in no time!
Loo break: Some.
Dream Cuts’ Madholal Keep Walking (A) is the story of Madholal (Subrat Dutta) who works as a peon and has the usual dreams and aspirations of a common man. He has an understanding wife, Kamla (Neela Gokhale), and two daughters, Sudha (Swara Bhaskar) and Summi (Varnita Aglawe). Life goes on as usual till one day, their world turns upside down when Madholal is seriously injured and loses a forearm in a bomb blast in the local train.
Madholal becomes a recluse, unable to face life again. His family tries its best but the memory of the bomb blast haunts him. His office colleagues also do their bit but to no avail. As luck would have it, Madholal’s trusted Muslim neighbour, Anwar (Pranay Narayan), is arrested as one of the suspects in the blasts case. What happens to Madholal? Is he able to come to terms with reality? Does he come out of his depression? These questions are answered in the end.
The first impression one gets when the train bomb blast happens is that this is yet another film on bomb blasts. But unlike other similar films, this one traces the aftermath of just one victim. Jai Tank and Sachin Darekar’s story and screenplay are predictable and although they have tried to show what a bomb blast victim goes through, they fail to involve the audience throughout. The drama gets repetitive after a point of time. The crude jokes in the first half are in complete contrast with the emotional and serious drama post-interval. In fact, the foul language of the pre-interval portion just doesn’t go well with the subject and will put off female audiences. The track of the arrest of Anwar is left incomplete as the viewer doesn’t know what happened to him after interrogation. The last part of the film gets philosophical and boring. Dialogues are good at places.
Although the calamity shown in the film is a bomb blast, presumably involving thousands of people travelling by the train, tracking the story of just one victim is hardly an intelligent writer’s approach. If only one victim’s life had to be shown, an accident involving just him would’ve been a better option. Probably, the writers wanted to sprinkle the drama with the philosophy of life going on in spite of such disasters as bomb blasts, which they wouldn’t have been able to if they had shown an accident involving just one individual. Whatever may have been their compulsion, the idea doesn’t appeal. Dialogues (Sachin Darekar, Prashant Loke and Viru Pandey) are earthy.
Subrat Dutta does a fine job as Madholal but he surely has neither the looks nor the charisma to carry a film on his shoulders. Neela Gokhale is excellent as his wife. Pranay Narayan is dull in the role of Anwar. Swara Bhaskar acts quite well but needs to get in more variation in her performance. Varnita Aglawe is nice as Summi. Harish Harihot leaves a mark as the stammering office peon. Jayant Gadhekar, Manoj Kolatkar (as Joshi Kaka), Parth Akerkar (as stock broker Jayesh), Rohit Dixit (as Rohit) and Vinod Nahrdhi (as lawyer Varma) perform very ably as Madholal’s travelling companions. Nina Singh is good as the office receptionist.
Jai Tank’s direction is average. His handling of emotional scenes is better than that of other scenes. The blast scene and the dilemma in the victim’s mind have been handled rather amateurishly. Music (Nayab-Raja) is functional. Lyrics (Saani Aslam and Sahil Fatehpuri) are alright. Background music (Ketan Sodha and Tanuj Tiku) is okay. Akashdeep’s photography, Navendu Sharma’s editing and other technical aspects are okay.
On the whole, Madholal Keep Walking may be a well-meaning film but its box-office prospects are dull as it will go out of breath at the box-office very soon.
– By Komal Nahta
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