Bollywood is India, and time and again, film-makers have used films to put their point across, and provide a mirror to the society, warts, scars and all. In fact, film activism was at it’s height in the seventies and eighties, where even a light social would not stay away from taking a potshot at the powers that govern. So, back in the seventies, you’d come across instances where a character playing a Goddess would tell a woman who asks for a boon of a 100 acres, “I would grant you a 100 acres, but the Devi (Hindi for woman as well a Goddess) that rules this land has a rule that one person can own only 12 acres.”
This activism gained a new color in the eighties and nineties, with unemployment, corruption and the rich poor divide becoming issues of note. Cut to the 2000s, and film activisim talks about everything from everyday corruption, the politician-gangster-terrorist-builder nexus to blatant terrorism. In such a scenario, movies that talked about everyday issues became more entertaining and interesting, because they talked about issues that the common public has experienced. Ungli is a movie that fits right into this category, and here is a complete review of the movie.
Ungli Story
A gang of four, with a token female and token person-from-minority wreck havoc in Mumbai city by hassling Government officials of all kinds, right from the RTO officers to the traffic police to the pension offices. Things get heated up when their videos become a rage and the Ungli Gang gets a fan following, and the police decide to get their hands. Of course, they have nobody to turn to , other than Kale (Dutt), a upright police officer known for his brutal ways. Kale recruits Nikhil (Emraan Hashmi), an enfant terrible, who is in the police force just because his father was in the police force, so he has some profession issues, which he solves by using the Bomb Squad to infiltrate a girl’s hostel where his ex-girlfriend lives.
The movie gets pretty predictable after this. Nikhil joins the gang, gets all cozy with the female of the gang, and then has reservations about joining them in their escapades, as well as pointing them off to his boss, Kale. The tadka in this stale dal comes when Kale himelf is pulled up for inefficiency and is to be given a punishment posting. The only way in which he can get a plum post is if he bribes a fixer five lakhs upfront and promises to give the rest in a couple of years. The coincidence here is that the fixer’s son is responsible for making the four, one a journalist, a pharmacist, a hacker and hanger-on into the Ungli gang. Yes, we all know where this is going.
Script, Characters and Screenplay Review
Ungli suffers from a weak script, storyline and characters. Also, the movie seems out of sync. The public anger about corruption etc., were at a high point six months ago, but today they think they have a victory of sorts, and Ungli seems like a unwanted revision of a chapter that is not coming in the exams anyway.
The characters and the story are the biggest flaws. Apart from the gym and restaurant bonding scene, we see no reason why three people with genuine jobs would risk everything they have to become criminals – that too for their gym teacher. In 2014, anyone would think that it’d be better to start an online campaign rather than teach the officials a lesson, wearing monkey cap.
The monkey caps reminds us of Kala Bazaar, a movie made in the late eighties, where Anil Kapoor makes a gang that strips businessmen, government officials, anyone who is corrupt, and has then run in their undies on the street. Even back then, this was cliched, but the movie was saved, kind of, by some powerful dialogue writing by Kader Khan. Unfortunately, even Emraan Hashmi’s Movember look cannot save the movie here.
Another aspect that is unbelievable is the manner in which the quartet go about avenging their issues. The most hilarious part is the ‘site-that-looks-suspiciously-like-the-online-video-site-whose-name-starts-with-Y’ video that they make. Granted, the Indian Police Force is not very digitally educated, but one video out there the authorities can immediately make out where the video is uploaded from. That the Ungli gang has a official video group is suspension of disbelief at it’s best, or worst.
However, the biggest flaw in the movie is the biggest name, Sanjay Dutt. We know little about Kale, other than that he is suspiciously single, drinks large pegs of whisky and that he fights when he has to. His crooked ways and his fighting prowess is nowhere to seen. Even the slo-mo sequence where he breaks a tube light on a man’s head is nowhere to be seen. Two of his dialogues are dubbed. Though inconsequential, they do marr an already low budget film. The location settings are an issue too.They make a mill a meetup points for criminals, not something one would want to draw attention to, after the sexual assault case. The climax in the made-up Bandra fort area, with an umpteen close-up of the Sealink is boring.
Emraan Hashmi is a washout in the movie as well. People come to watch him be a wheeler dealer, rolling high, son-of-a-gun stealing kisses and basically caring a damn. In Ungli, he is a police office r caught between doing what is right and doing what he knows is right.
The final case that the Ungli Gang solves is mildly entertaining, but suffers from the same problem that the entire movie does, there is this huge, thick brush that is used to paint the situation in black and white. Anybody who has a police officer in their family will say that it is not always that policemen pay a bribe to get a plum or a safe posting. They genuinely fear for their and their family’s safety, while sometimes punishment postings are just that, punishment for standing up to the wrongs in the system. How defacing every policeman who ever bribed or takes bribes solves the problem is confusing.
Final Thought
A few months ago, Ungli could be a success, because the country was reeling under a lot of disappointment. However, with the public mentality changed, and good news trickling from every corner, the blatant issues that the movie counters seem to be rather tame. A weak script and characterisation make this a collegian’s dream.
