Maharathi (2008)

Well Deserved Praise

That was an excellent one.

A Disappointing Continuation

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Lovely movie , excellent performances , top notch screenplay , loved every bit of it , nail biting climax

Whilst searching around online to try and answer a question which had been asked on the IMDb Film Noir board,("Is there a movie based on the Hadley Chase novel There's Always a Price Tag?")I was very happy to find that there was a 2008 Bollywood adaptation of the novel,due to having searched for a good while to find a Bollywood Noir,which I hoped to use as an introduction to the genre for a friend,who is a pretty big fan of Bollywood films. The plot:Whilst driving back home,washed-up film producer Jaisingh Adenwalla suddenly crashes his car.Luckally for him,a man called Subhash Sharma is near by.Sharma,realising that the car could blow up at any moment,bravely pulls Adenwalla safely away from the wreckage.As Adenwalla begins to regain consciousness,he tells Subhash that he has been completely taken aback,by how much a total stranger was willing to risk his own life to save another's.To show his gratitude for Subash, (who has been attempting to become a film star for the last 10 years) Adenwalla pushes Sharma into excepting a job offer of being his private driver,whose wages he will pay for himself.Sadly,this does not go down too well with Adenwalla's "trophy wife" Mallika,who is constantly trying to get money out of him,to repay some of the debt from his box office disasters-ten years ago.Although his wife tries to get Subhash fried,by playing some very nasty games,Adenwalla stubbornly refuses to fire him,partly because he sees in Sharma someone who he would have pushed into the spotlight,during his heyday.Shortly after the argument over the hiring,Mallika becomes extremely angry,when she is told by Adenwalla that all her cheques will now permanently bounce,due to him having cancelled all the transfers of his cash going into her account.Hearing this,Mallika ends up throwing Jaisingh's breathalyser away,during a horrible asthma attack.Thankfully,Subhash is near by,and he is able to get hold of the breathalyser in time.Being distraught over the treatment from his wife,Adenwalla gathers Subhash,to secretly give him a letter,which he orders to be delivered to his lawyer the next day.Later on that same day,Jaisingh tells Mallika and Sharma to come and sit with him,so he can announce something to both of them.To Mallika's shock,Adenwalla tells her that he has changed his will,so that she would be unable to collect any of his money if he commits suicide.Jaisingh then tells Sharma that he asked him to be here,so that he would not be set up as a murderer.Suddenly,Adenwalla pulls out a gun,and kills himself!Whilst they both try to gather there thoughts,Subhash decides to open the letter that Adenwalla had left for his lawyer.To his amazement,Subash discovers that the will has been changed for him to be the main benefactor.As he gets to the end of the letter,Subash realises that Adenwalla had written the letter,so that Sharma would also not be able to get the money if he commits suicide. Quickly realising that if he and Mallika make it look for a few days that Adenwalla is still alive,they would be able to convince people that Adenwalla has actually been murdered,Subash stops Mallika from phoning the police,and tells her that if she wants to get hold of any of her husbands money,then she must follow his plan...View on the film:The first people who I feel should be really praised for giving the film a great Noir mood are the wonderful cast,with Naseeruddin Shah delivering a scene-stealing performance as the boozed-up movie producer,who whilst softening to Subhash,still has a very crusty,bitter side.For the role of his trophy wife,Neha Dhupia has Mallika be someone who attempts to dig her nails deep into her husbands bank account,hoping that nothing will cause her to lose her grip.Playing the main character who devises the cunning plan to cover Adenwalla's suicide,Paresh Rawal excellently shows the cunning,darker side of Subhash gradually creep in,with Subhash being shown to strongly believe that,if,he and Mallika are able to convince people that a murder has taken place,he will at last be able to get hold of all of the riches,that Subhash has been trying to grip on to,since attempting to break into the film industry. With the very good directing of the film,director Shivam Nair wisely leaves out any songs,until the end credits.Instead,he unexpectedly gives the film a David Fincher look,with some stunning shoots in the film,being ones that would not be out of place in Finchers under- appreciated 2002 thriller Panic Room.Nair also cleverly keeps Mallika in distance shoots,until the suicide of her husband,leads her to "crossing the floor" and grudgingly talking to Subhash.Sadly,the praise the can be given to the excellent cast and great directing can not be given to the screenplay by Uttam Gada.After having done well to build up to Adenwalla's suicide in the first half Gada. Sadly gets the film to full into a hole,which it is never able to completely escape from,with the death of a major character in the middle section of the film,giving a huge opportunity for the film to end on a Noirish,moody note.Shockingly,Gada decides to handle the death of the character as badly as possible,with no explanation being offered,and any possible hint of the other characters having a motive for the killing,being swiftly brushed under the carpet. Final view on the film:A very well directed,overlooked Bollywood Film Noir,with great performances from the excellent cast,let down by an unexpectedly tangled screenplay.

Gujarati play?? Hmmm.. Its a rip-off of the James Hadley Chase classic, THERE'S ALWAYS A PRICE TAG!! Glyn Nash and Helen Dester try to pass of Dester's suicide as a murder, to claim insurance but things go horribly wrong.. A very poor version of the path-breaking novel, if I may say so!! Chase must be turning in his grave, to see his block busters being produced in all sorts of ways.. without even a wee bit of credit to him. There has also been a TV version of the story, if I remember correctly. I know that it is quite impossible to bring Chase's multi-dimensional characters to life on the screen.. but a little credit or acknowledgment would surely be in order?

Apparently based on a gujarati play that featured Paresh Rawal himself, this is a very interesting movie with some good twists and turns.A very interesting plot that seems original and well thought out. The movie starts off average, builds very well. Unlike most movies that seem to miss the bus at the end, this one does well at the end.The first half belongs to Naseeruddin Shah, the old eccentric one time successful film producer, who is now in debt and has a drinking problem. He is helped by Paresh Rawal in a car accident and subsequently, gives Rawal the job of a driver.His wife, Neha Dhupia is a gold-digger who constantly fights and wants him dead to then lay her hands on the hefty insurance policy.The story picks up when Naseer shoots himself and challenges her to prove that it was not suicide. If a suicide is proved, she doesn't receive any insurance. While the movie says that it will be because he has written that clause in the benefactor agreement, I believe most insurance companies offer no compensation in the case of a proved suicide.This is where Paresh Rawal enters the center stage and its brilliant to watch him transition from a demure master-worshiping driver to a scheming thug.Boman Irani, Neha Dhupia and Tara Sharma perform their parts well and are thoughtfully cast. While I wonder what Dhupia and Sharma were doing in the movie at first, I believe there has been some good thought put into their casting.The background score was non existent {didnt realize that there was one} and could have complemented the actors well. The director thankfully resists the temptation of item numbers.An interesting twist in the ending and a screenplay that makes a lot of sense.All in all, a great watch.