The volume of violence in filmmaker Pulkit’ s Maalik would surprise and shock only those who haven’t seen his outstanding series, Bhakshak, which was about sexual violence.
Maalik is about the politics of violence. And the violence IN politics. It is set in the city of Amitabh Bachchan, Allahabad, and there are some delectable references to the Superstar. I especially liked Rajkummar Rao’s deadpan response after a shootout in a movie theatre: “Manoranjan mein hinsa?!”
Writer-director Pulkit does the opposite: hinsa mein manoranjan. There is much to be said about a film that peels off layer after layer of commissioned violence in the Uttar Pradesh of the 1990s—long before Yogi’s operation cleanup—to reveal what we already know: the more we use violence as a tool of protest, the more its chances of becoming nothing but a weapon of mass destruction.
Would it be politically correct to say Pulkit takes tremendous pleasure in shooting the gun-shooting? Large passages of the brilliantly moody mise en scene are devoted to ferreting out the rites of bulleteering (to coin a word) without seeming to feel any remorse on behalf of the characters.
The film’s prologue is a shocker: an overweight non-complying cop is brought into the criminal hero Maalik’s hideout, made to lick his own spit and gunned down mercilessly.
This is no country for the weak-hearted. And yet the violence in Maalik is not gratuitous in the way it was in Animal. The brutal prolonged shootouts do not convey the violence-is-fun mood of Sandeep Vanga’s Animal, nor does it lean too heavily into the dynamics of internecine violence at a time when ‘encounters’ were never brief, but always redolent with grief.
Prosenjit Chatterjee as Das, the Bengali encounter cop, comes across as damagingly weak. His character is supposed to take on Deepak, alias Maalik. But seems tied down by redtapism and plain incompetence. The part is underwritten and ineffective. I don’t think Chatterjee was the right actor for this part.
Manushi Chillar as the wife of the Killer, is miscast though she tries hard. But wearing hangdog expressions and cotton sarees are not enough to convey the anxieties of a woman whose husband could be killed anytime. She is a very poor cousin to what Shefali Shah played in Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya. Although Manushi has some stirring moments with Rao, which work on account of Rao’s propensity to steer a brakeless car out of choppy roadways.
The rest of the cast is predominantly terrific, especially the ever-dependable Saurabh Shukla and Swanand Kirkire as the primary catalysts of catastrophe. Another stand-out performance comes from Anshuman Pushkar as Maalik’s best friend and right-hand man, Badauna.
Even as Rajkummar Rao took centrestage with inexorable aplomb, I found myself peeping at Badauna’s expressions. This is a man who won’t stay in the shadows for long.
The film’s pacy dramatic tension is bolstered by Anuj Rakesh Dhawan’s semi-sepia-toned, muted, and unsparing cinematography and Zubin Sheikh’s razor-sharp editing, which confer a compelling and tragic timbre to the relentless shootouts.
Shortcomings? Yes, of course. What was the point of bringing in Huma Qureshi doing a poor country-cousin version of Bipasha Basu’s ‘Bidi jalaiy le’ from Omkara?
Also, the mood of the storytelling is savage. It may strike some sections of the audience as excessively violent. But there is no denying the fact that Pulkit has constructed a spellbinding spiral of hurts and wounds that tell a story of an exploitative caste-based social order which favours the empowered.
Pulkit doesn’t put too much stress on the theme of social inequality. He just wants to tell a punitive story that keeps us on the edge of the seat . In that, Maalik scores brainy and brawny points.
