Bhavesh Joshi Superhero Movie Review: It Will Tug Your Conscience!

Bhavesh Joshi Superhero

Starring Harshvardhan Kapoor, Priyanshu Painyuli, Ashish Verma

Directed by Vikramditya Motwane

Rating: ****(4 Stars)

Harshvardhan Kapoor  doesn’t play the  title role in Bhavesh Joshi.  Anyone  could.This is a film about  pricking awake  the conscience , so well written, and so successful in  downplaying the image  of  the  typical hero.Anyone  could be that prick.

On the other hand  no one really bothers. Why should they when all you get for trying to change the status quo is  a death  in the gutter? What makes this film an important  testament  on the  need to  make  your voice of protest  is  the language  used to convey that urgent need to raise one’s voice.

 Though wrongly marketed as a super-hero film Bhavesh Joshi actually tells  us why the  cult of super-heroism needs  to be  urgently  replaced by a more practical and tenable  form of working class heroism.

Hence Sikandar(Harshvardhan Kapoor) is  at first  happy being a pseudo-reformist  spewing reformatory jargon in smoky pubs until something happens to put him on red alert.

 The  film has a  slow steady and solid buildup to a climactic outburst that is so powerfully shot it leaves us with a  sense of​ foreboding  for  the hero whose mask peels off to reveal the face of  the ordinary man  suffering the indignities of a system that allows  politicians to fleece  and flee.

Nishikant Kamat makes a menacing villain. A  politician on  the corporator’s level so  more into  street goondaism than  a more powerful politician, ​who  dreams of controlling Mumbai.

What makes Aditya Motwane’s  film on the extraordinary heroism  of ordinary  people  is its relentless  statement on unostentatious heroism. Harshvardhan  Kapoor, in a post-debut role that allows him to prove he has the creative chops to carry a role even when cast as a​ reluctant hero, steps into  the heroic mould without losing his sense of  ordinariness . The young actor excels in conveying the helplessness and growing rage of the  average  youngsters who watches the dance  of plunder, this  time it is  Mumbai’s water supply that plundering politicians desire.

 How we look at  Sikandar(Kapoor)’s efforts to stop the plunder is  entirely reliant on how effectively we accept Harshvardhan Kapoor as an actor who excels in being in  a man who won’t  give up Anna Hazare’s dream  of re-structuring society​. Harshavardhan gets   ample opportunity to play a character who gets caught in definitions of heroism from a internet joke to a suicidal vigilante​

.He  makes judicious use of the character’s dilemma to build  a structure of  doddering idealism.​

He is well supported  by two other young actors PryanshuPainyuli and  Ashish Verma who play  Harshvardhan’s  brothers in arms.

 Bhavesh Joshi is  a film that  catches us offguard. Its message of social awakening spotlights a  film that is brave  and  bleak.Shot with a ​striking sense  of the raw and the real  by cinematographer Sidharth Duwan this is a film that salutes a wounded  civilization without resorting to the  flag-waving patriotism  of  Parmanu.It doesn’t offer instant solutions and home-made remedies against corruption  in  politics. It tells us all to go out there and try to make  a difference.

 Just like the producers and director of this film have done.

​ Bhavesh Joshi is an important film that shouldn’t be missed.​