Rustom (Hindi)
Director: Tinu Suresh Desai
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Ileana D’Cruz, Esha Gupta
You smell a rat right away. It’s at the entry of the naval officer hero Rustom Pavri (Akshay Kumar) framed against the tricolour fluttering away in the background. Director Tinu Suresh Desai reinterprets the (in)famous K.M. Nanavati case of yore and builds a popular conspiracy theory around it in the spirit of today’s uber-patriotic times, quite conveniently at that. Kumar, plays Nanavati while Ileana D’ Cruz is Cynthia (the philandering Sylvia from real life) and Arjun Bajwa plays Vikram Makhija (the playboy Prem Ahuja).
“Kuchh to hai jo pakad mein nahin aa raha hai (There is something that we are missing),” says investigating cop Vincent Lobo (Pavan Malhotra) at some point. However, any marginally intelligent viewer would know where things are heading.There is nothing remotely credible or engaging in the thriller. The film, in fact, feels like a parody of several murder mysteries and court room dramas we have seen down the ages. But, what is more irritating is the righteousness attributed to the killer protagonist – a virtuous Kumar, right down to the sanctimonious moustache and straight spine; then the overt guilt, perennially inclined head of Ileana and the talk of putting the Queen at stake in the game of chess, all for an eventual win.
There is the constant harping on doing the right thing the wrong way. It all comes down to a combat situation, self defence, reflex action and ‘civilians’ ka vishwas’. Eventually, a kangaroo court comes to the rescue but not before turning the film into utter hotchpotch of a narrative.
In just a few scenes, there is the fleeting mention of friction between the Sindhi community to which the victim belongs and the Parsis, and you wonder if the film is trying to chart out an interesting, provocative terrain. But it never becomes anything more than a mere mention. D’Cruz seems to be suffering from a bad case of makeup with the shade of pink leaking all over the face. Or is it the colour of shame? The characters on the side are rendered caricature-like, defined by quirks.
The period recreation of 1959 Bombay feels like a tacky, bad copy of the city that Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet created. I wondered if it wouldn't have been better for the film to have been updated for contemporary times. Also, stealthy affairs of the heart could have had an added edge of complication in the mobile phone dominated times that we live in.
NAMRATA JOSHI
