Chehre Movie Review: The Mighty Bachchan’s Monologue Will Blow Your Mind!

Chehre

Director

Rumi Jaffery

Writers

Ranjit Kapoor,Rumi Jaffery

Cast

Amitabh Bachchan,Emraan Hashmi,Krystle D’Souza

Plot

An ad agency executive takes shelter at an old man’s home in mountains amid a dangerous snow storm, but soon finds himself trapped with no way out when the man and his clan of veterans hook him for a game of crime and punishment.

Rating: ****

Chehre Movie Review: A snow blizzard  drives the  wizard of awe far beyond the precincts  of the plot,   into a  tirade  against  all atrocities and crimes  committed against women. He  speaks  about Nirbhaya and acid attacks, women being  made to relive  the trauma  of  rape each time they attend a  court hearing. He speaks. Everyone  on the screen and  in the audience, listens.

 “There is  no  nyay  only faisla,” the Bachchan  baritone  boomed across the  big screen  as  I sat listening and watching ,wondering , are there no  fulltops to this  actor’s  aspirations?

 Chehre  is  a chamber-piece which echoes  Agatha Christie’s  12 Little Indians  and Basu Chatterjee’s Ek Ruka Hua Faisla in that the  concept of justice  is discussed  within the confines  of   the four walls. Director Rumy Jaffrey has a  sound  understanding of  spatial rhythms and  cloistered  harmonies. He allows the characters’  movements to be  fluid   in the confines  of  a one-location setting allowing them to dine whine and  shine with  surreptitious seamlessness.

The  film has a deliberately stagey look, which is the required mood in the  drama  of dissent as  it flows among four retired custodians  of the  judiciary getting  together  to harangue a  stranger  who happened be  be passing by.

I must say Emraan  Hashmi plays the stranger-in-danger with much relish. He brings a  swiveling  chuckle to his part as  the ambitious entrepreneur with  a dirty  past. Though  the  drama is driven by the Bachchan’s  tireless zest  for  peeling the onion of  the existential  conundrum, Hashmi  manages to  hold his  own, allowing us to overlook some  of the  works  glaring deficiencies,  the poor acting  by the two female  actors, for example.

Not their fault. This  is  a guy’s  story. And  the male actors  rip into their roles with wolfish relish.Annu Kapoor and Dhritiman Chatterjee are  a pleasurably  clued   into their  characters. Raghuvir Yadav who plays  the  fourth judicial  pillar in a mock-trial that is constructed with  devastating  diligence, is saddled with  an underwritten  character, as does Siddhant Kapoor, the only mute  character in this  verbose drama.

But it is  the  mighty Bachchan who presides  over the  plot.Lording over  the  legalese  he is at once the  judge and the  jury  , the   wounded and the warrior.

 Oh yes, there is  another super-hero in  Chehre. The  cinematographer  Binod Pradhan shoots the  film in a  striking semi-sepia sweep of rusty  brows and  glittering  greys. Between them, Mr Bachchan and Mr Pradhan  make Chehre  an out-of-courtroom legal  drama like never before.Order, order ! Order  your tickets  now.