Matka (dubbed in Hindi)
For my time and money, Varun Tej is one of the interesting young contemporary Telugu actors with a rapidly growing repertoire of impressive roles. In his last outing, Operation Valentine, he was every inch the sinewy soldier.
Writer-director Karuna Kumar, who after Palasa 1978 again travels back in time, takes Varun back into the 1970 and 80s to recreate the life and crimes of Matka king Vasu based on the real-life character Ratan Khetri who bamboozled his way into Indian politics with his illicit gambling.
I haven’t seen what the original looks like. But Varun Tej (definitely the more talented of the two lead-playing Varuns in Indian cinema) knocks the socks off his character, literally catching the character by the collar and bullying his way into the Matka king’s inner life.
As Vasu he transitions from the character’s teens to his 50s with an arresting swag. Regrettably, the film is not able to do justice to Varun Tej’s exuberant performance, bottling his bravura into scene after scene that seems either over-stretched or under-written, if not both at the same time.
A lot of the scenes are shot inside a flashy night club which becomes the screenplay’s playing ground, and not a very inspired one. The action scenes are insipid and the less said of Nora Fatehi’s cabaret, the better. Suffice it to say that cabaret queen Helen would probably regret making the filmi cabaret so popular if she sees what Fatehi has done to it.
Nora Fatehi plays some kind of a seductive moll from the 1970s who doesn’t believe in wasting time. When she hears that Vasu has separated from his sweet homely wife (played by a Vidya Balan clone Meenakshi Chaudhary, think Nayakan) she quickly leans in.
“I have control over all three,” Vasu informs the cabaret floozie, pointing righteously to his mind, heart and loins.
I wish the writer-director too had exercised more control over the proceedings. Matka runs all over the place. This is the director Karuna Kumar’s fourth film in three years. He needs to slow down.
Besides, this is familiar territory, seen recently in Michael and King Of Kotha, glorifying criminality and gangsterism on the pretext that a man has got to do what he has got to do. In fact, Vasu in a lengthy monologue which nearly puts his little daughter to sleep (and we are not far behind) says as much.
