When it comes to rape can a film now be set in any city other than Delhi? The city is also the political centre where crime thrives on power play. So you have an unsuspecting mother and daughter getting gangraped, the daughter killed and police looking the other way because the criminals are well-connected. A perfect recipe for a Zakhmi Aurat kind of narrative to emerge. It does and how!
- Director: Ashtar Sayed
- Starring: Raveena Tandon, Divya Jagdale, Madhur Mittal, Rushad Rana
- Run time: 113 mins
Raveena Tandon plays the avenging angel Vidya Chauhan running riot on her lonesome ownsome with moral support coming from the unsuspecting, firebrand friend Ritu (Divya Jagdale). The portrayal of rape does get brutal, queasy and disturbing and Madhur Mittal is particularly abhorrent as the villain-in-command. But worse than the depiction of physical violence is the husband’s (Rushad Rana) dismal lack of concern and a seeming apathy in the face of tragedy. He should have been the first to be bumped off for blaming the wife to have brought the rape upon herself. How? By taking a wrong turn on the road! There’s not a single reassuring male presence in the film. Which is what makes it like one of the vigilante justice sagas of the 80s—old fashioned, rough, loud, over the top, and all about offering some kind of emotional catharsis through violence to the woman wronged, rather than any significant thoughts for us to ponder on.
At some point the revenge seems to play out in an unbelievably easy and utterly illogical fashion, with no one even noticing Tandon despite her looming large at the scene of crime. At others it gets way too bloody. And in the midst of all the chaos Tandon moves purposefully from one murder to the other, however misplaced the determination might be. She kills her intended targets with sincerity and single-mindedness. Wish the film worked with the same zeal as well.
