Traffic Is A Heart Stopping Homage To Its Dead Director

One Thing Is For Sure…Traffic  Is A Heart Stopping Homage To Its Dead Director

This one is all heart.

Director Rajesh Pillai’s heart stopped beating soon after he completed shooting Traffic, the Hindi version of his 2011 Malayalam hit, about a group of crisis-motivated  people frantically trying to get a heart over to a hospital for a young girl’s heart transplant.

Considered a game-changer in its original version , the Hindi version of Traffic  which opens on 6 May has the potential to knock the bottom off the thriller genre. Consider the heartstopping suspense element: a girl’s life depends on an ambulance carrying her life-saving organ. Myriad characters come together from different parts of the city’s administration to ensure ambulance’s speedy progression.

While the original was set in the traffic snarls of Chennai the Hindi version moves into the human maze of theMumbai traffic . It’s a perfect setting for a video-game. Pillai brings this street-smart story into the hemisphere  of the humane. The slickly and deftly cut trailer features a wealth of acting talent.

If you’ve seen the original Malayalam film you will know how crucial the actors are to the impact of the story. In Hindi we’ve stalwarts like Sachin Khedkar and Bangla superstar Prosenjit  Chatterjee stepping into parts that require more heart than usual.

Manoj Bajpai steps into  a role earmarked for Ajay Devgn. Divya Dutt and KituKidwani(so lovely to see her)  pitched against one another as the mother of the girl who needs the heart, and the mother of the young man whose dying body can provide the heart.

Jimmy Shergil makes an impressive cop expressing his distrust of the Mumbai traffic during a time of excruciating emergency. But it’s Manoj Bajpai as a disgraced police constable redeeming his reputation by rising to the occasion, who catches our attention with yet another character transformation.No doubt this is going to be another glorious romp to the finishing line for Bajpai after Aligarh.

Originally in Malayalam, Traffic was remade into Tamil and Kannada .The Hindi version seems to exude the aura of street angst. It ventures into a real life story of  girl who needed an urgent heart  transplant. InterestinglyTraffic releases a week ahead of Vivek Agnihotri’s Buddha In a Traffic Jam(traffic-stoppers’ month in May),and a week after the S Ramanujan bio-pic The Man Who Knew Infinity which is also a story of indomitable courage in the face of adversity.