From the looks of it one would place Ishqiya in the Omkara territory but Vishal Bhardwaj’s erstwhile assistant isn’t inspired by just one Vishal Bhardwaj film. Rather Chaubey sets a Kaminey like film in Omkara country to come up with Ishqiya a tale of two small time thives Khalujaan and Babban who are on the run after robbing Mushtaq.
With all doors closed and no where to go Babban and his Uncle decide to cross over into Nepal with the help of their friend but upon landing up at his place they are greeted by his widow Krishna. Their sojourn gets sour when Mushtaq finds them and to make matter worse Babban manages to lose the loot. Mushtaq gives them one month to come up with the lost 25 lacs and warns them that he won’t hesitate to kill Krishna along with them. Taking matter in her hand Krishna uses her charm to convince both Khalujaan and Babban to join her in kidnapping a local industrialist in order to recover Mushtaq’s money. With each one falling head over heels for Krishna, both the uncle and nephew readily agree but with each passing minute starts revealing ugly secrets of Krishna’s past.
There is some strange fascination that the current lot of Mumbai directors seem to have with the classic Western genre of Hollywood. Take Kaminey for instance; while the premise was very urban and very pulp the execution was very western especially the climax. Here too as Ishqiya trudges into the final act the cutting pattern, the narrative, the music, the sound design and just about everything resembles a Western and while this isn’t some thing that sticks out keeping the execution of the film, it does, at times, feel like a very convenient way out. There is some thing funny about the way directors approach the climax in this new found Pulpy-Curry-Western Tashan had a balls to the wall neurotic action sequence in the end, Kaminey had get-every-character-living-or-dead in a crazy roller-coaster ride in the end. Ishqiya suffers from a far too familiar too Kamineyesque feel towards the end but thankfully jumps to the conclusion. Forget action sequences even characters in these curry westerns have started looking like Eli Wallach wannabes. Like Anil Kapoor’s Bhaiyaji act in Tashan, Salman Shahid, the actor who plays Mushtaq is just too much by the end.
What works for Ishqiya is the backdrop against which it is set. While one has seen a similar place in Omakra and Seher, Ishqiya ventures deeper into the hinterland. Forget knowing such a place, this is a part of India that a very few from the city could ever imagine. It is against this fantastic City of God like set-up that the drama unfolds. At times Ishqiya has too much happening- two thieves on the run, city slicker gangster chasing, a Maoist like revolution in the villager, illegal arms smuggling, casteism- but the screenplay maintains a light flavor and things never get too serious.
The acting in the film is sure to talked about and rightfully so to a very large extent. Excellently cast the leads don’t fall short of mark for a large part of the film but one wondered why didn’t Vidya Balan work on her accent? She supposedly plays a woman who is based out of Gorakhpur but her pronunciation, which would put Pakeezah or Umrao Jaan Ada to shame, manages to convince you otherwise. Barring this odd omission Balan delivers. The only person who seems to be having a blast looking at Arshad Warsi’s Babban would undoubtedly have to be Warsi himself. He has been given the best lines in the film and makes most of it. But it’s the wily Naseeruddin Shah who surprises the most with his man-child number as the elder half of the scheming duo making full use of every opportunity Chaubey’s script offers.
Bound to be compared to Kaminey and Omkara, Ishqiya’s premise has a lot going for it but unlike some Kaminey it doesn’t get complicated and manages to maintain a healthy black humor unlike the overtly theatrical Omkara. Don’t rate this film higher than the two it owes its birth to but Ishqiya has its highs. Like many recent films, this too has a great basis; it is blessed with good production design, fluid camerawork, and nice songs but doesn’t deliver the gourmet fare it teases you with.
Peppered with some really crude dialogues, which are bound to join the merry list of memorable film one-liners, Ishqiya’s first half sets the bar a tad too high for it’s own good. Ishqiya This is a film that can be enjoyed once for all lovers of curry western genre and is a close look at a fascinating world but some where one can’t help but feel that Chaubey uses a telescope to look into it.
Image Courtesy: Reuters