Badlapur: Can this "badla" lead to a "badlav"?

When the Hindi word "badla" is referred to, it essentially means one of the two: Change, or revenge. Sriram Raghavan's Badlapur is a film that tests both to the extremes. In the process of watching this saga of revenge, one almost sees oneself changing. As the protagonists - Raghu (Varun Dhawan) and Liak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) - change over a period of some sixteen years, the viewer is forced to accept changed identities of the two. The sense of satisfaction in Badlapur - both for the actors and the audience - is temporary, hatred overshadows love, and victory is Pyrrhic. The neat and clean compartments of good and bad, hero and villain, predator and the prey - all go for a toss. It is as if, like an ageing Liak's greying hair, the viewer too undergoes a greying of sorts over the on-screen fifteen years.

Badlapur, which is steadily growing at the Box Office, is not an entertainer. It is a treat if one can manage to leave the "usual" Bollywood expectations outside the theatre.

In Varun Dhawan's Raghu, the man who loses his wife and child to a bank robbery, we have a different anti-hero. Dhawan's bloodshot eyes do most of the talking in the film, and the rage is raw and frightening. In Liak, Siddiqui yet again proves why casting him in a film is game-changing. The straight-faced humour, peppered with occasional outbreaks of frustration, to the simmering anger guised under a calm exterior - the actor displays a gamut of emotions with much elan and to ear-splitting applause. In the theatre that I watched the film, Siddiqui's poignant yet hilarious request to Jhimli (Huma Qureshi) to talk "gandi baat", even as sorrow engulfs the two, for example, was received with deafening taalis and seetis that Saturday evening moviegoers in Noida are not very generous with.

Badlapur's treatment of both change and revenge is scary on the one hand, and delightful on the other. You begin watching the film, you know that there will be revenge, but you cannot tear your eyes off the screen as Raghu bludgeons the killers of his family to death with a sledgehammer. And as Dhawan unflinchingly braves the blood-drops on his face, it is the viewer who, off screen, feels drenched. Raghavan is somewhat generous with moments of comic relief in the film, but before the audience can break out in a proper laugh, there arrives a blow. Human psyches are twisted here. The police officer, Govind Mishra (Kumud Mishra), is believed to be fair, yet he too is not devoid of greed.

The supporting cast of the film - consisting of names like Huma Qureshi, Divya Dutta, Yami Gautam, Radhika Apte, Vinay Pathak and Kumud Mishra - is the reason the two men, Dhawan and Siddiqui, can accomplish their own tasks, both on the screen and off it. But Badlapur does have its flaws. The narrative, for example, sags a bit in the first half. At times, once the background is properly in place but the film doesn't stop taxiing around, you're actually left wondering when would it finally take off. The occasional losing steam, however, is more than adequately made up for in the many intestine-clenching moments.

The men in the film - Varun, Nawaz, Vinay - are all performers first, and entertainers thereafter. Among this motley group of actors, Siddiqui pretty much outdoes everyone else. Which is, well, quite expected given the fact that the man has - till date - not had one single negative comment from any critic or viewer as far as his acting is concerned. Ergo, when a three-film old Dhawan has the chutzpah to break away from the mould and stand tall in a frame that has a Siddiqui in it, he needs to be lauded. He might not have made much of a difference with his candyfloss lover-boy image thus far, but Badlapur might just be his watershed. And in the process, if he manages to make his contemporaries - and many industry seniors, too, for that matter - demolish their existent images and take up such risks, we might just see that much-needed change in Hindi films.

Here's hoping Badlapur is able to bring about that "badlav" (change).