A Wednesday

When I heard the title of this movie, I brushed it aside, as just another one. But Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher in the main cast did catch my attention.

When I did manage to watch it a month later, realised that the movie is a neat little surprise package. "Little" here is in the literal sense, cos the movie doesn't stretch beyond 1.5 hours. Think both Shah and Kher, must have had a mind battle, in proving their excellence in acting. Ofcourse, they can be easily dubbed them as the finest actors in contemporary cinema.

The film starts with Prakash Rathod (played by Kher), a retired policeman, narrating an incident which occurred on a Wednesday, during his stint as the Commissioner.

The next scene, cuts to a post middle-aged man (Shah), who is placing bags all over Mumbai; Railway Terminus, Police station et al. The movie gathers steam, when he calls Rathod and says that he has placed bombs all over Mumbai, and will set them off, if 4 deadly terrorists are not released.

After much dabbling and realizing the seriousness of the situation, Rathod obliges. But he gets his best officers, Arif Khan (Jimmy Shergill) and Jai (Amir Bashir), to track the unknown caller. The caller, also informs a TV reporter, Naina Roy (Deepal Shaw) about this, but not providing her the full details. The news hungry Media team implicitly helps him in keeping a track of the situation.

The movie follows through as any other regular thriller, with a predictable twist towards the end.

There are some glitches, like the justification given by Shah, for his act, which seems unreal. The RDX being easily planted in the police station (like he was not frisked) etc etc.

But overall, the plot is pretty tight, with no drag-around (or songs rather). Also, the sorry state of the Indian Media, is exhibited in a very subtle manner.

The dialogue delivery by both Shah and Kher with the camera focused on the face is awesome (Sorry Sarkar, this was much better). Jimmy looks better with less dialogues and being more of a gum chewing, no-nonsense cop.

Something which was rather hard to believe, was the technology used by the Mumbai Police. The scenes where they try to track down the caller, seems a bit Bourneish. Really hope, that they do use such cutting-edge technology, in real life.

Reco: Should watch, if you’re bored of the regular Bollywood flicks. This is a fresh one.

And all you critics who are trying to rip this movie apart, try the other ones around; they are more crappy, according to me.

Best line: "Main apko us aadmi ka naam nahi bataunga…kyunko aadmi, naam mein mazab doond leta hain" (By Rathod in the background)