Runway 34 Review: The Teacher & The Taut!

Runway 34

Starring Ajay Devgan, Amitabh  Bachchan,Rakul Preet Singh

Directed by Ajay Devgan

Rating: ****

There is one thing  to be  said  about Amitabh  Bachchan and Rakul Preet Singh’s pink lipstick . They never fade , no matter how   high the tension.

Mr Bachchan plays Narayan Vedant,a senior aviation investigator who  unleashes  a fury  of  questions on Devgan’s  Captain Vikrant  Khanna after a flight from Dubai to Kochi  gets into  serious trouble.

Devgan’s Vikrant  of course saves the  (may)day.

His  conduct raises several issues, all nicely ironed out  by the end. But the dramatic tension, while  it lasts, is  pretty compelling, eliciting the right amount of sweaty tension  while airborne, and shitty detention  on ground level when  Bachchan-Devgan courtroom sequences begin.

While applauding  Devgan for playing a  far-from perfect hero  , I must also point out that he has some really talented supporting actors to invigorate  the taut screenplay’s impelling  thrust forward.Boman Irani is excellent as  the  opportunistic avaricious airline owner. His character hardly gets any space to breathe.When it dies  he is  required to  spew fire like  demented dragon.

Devgan’s  wife played by  Aakanksha Singh could have been  a much more persuasive  character had she  been shown to  have a will of her own. Sadly she is  constantly seen justifying her  husband’s  transgressions  with the  I-know-my-husband-too-well arguments which  begin to  seem  illogical and stupid after  a point.

What holds  the  plot together are  the  two main actors.Devgan and Bachchan are a treat to watch in the courtroom  sequences.  The latter’s penchant for using shuddh Hindi  legal terms and  then  translating them for us philistines  is delectable. Devgan’s performance is among the finest of his career. He is  bridled and  brooding, intensely introverted, playing the misunderstood hero with  a level of maturity that most topnotch heroes of  Hindi cinema are  not familiar  with.

Technically sound and shot in fetching shades  of  dark grey and  moonless white by cinematographer  Aseem Bajaj , this is actually a far  more accomplished  thriller than  commercial Hindi cinema usually creates.It has  a no-nonsense aura  surrounding  it.

Even in the most disquieting phases in the plot the writing(by  Sandeep Kewlani and  Amil Keeyan Khan) is calm.