Netflix takes us this time to Manabo, a remote rocky hamlet on the sands of Rajasthan bordering Pakistan, in its latest mysterious tale of revenge. Titled Thar, after the harsh desert, it slips into the oft-repeated tendency to bite more than it can chew. The plate overflows with subplots that writer-director Raj Singh Chaudhary struggles to blend into a cohesive unit with the result that the region’s dacoity, illicit opium trade and antique business jostle with one another to find a foothold on a canvas that primarily sets out to paint the pain and agony of a man wronged.
Anil Kapoor’s son, Harsh Varrdhan, plays Siddharth – a man of very few words who hides behind a deep tragedy. He tells Inspector Surekha Singh (Kapoor) that he buys and sells rare antiques, and hopes to find some of them buried in the desert. He has a license from the Archeological Survey of India, and it is 1985 when antique smugglers had a free run and law enforcers did nothing much about it.
Chaudhary nudges us towards what is seemingly a racket in this trade, but when a murder happens in the sleepy environs of the punishing terrain, we know that the movie has more to reveal than a simple plot of smuggling.
And what could be this? As it turns out later, Thar is a tale of revenge and retribution, and these take a monstrous form littering the screen with blood and bodies. The torture perpetrated by the villain is literally unwatchable.
As Singh – on the verge of his retirement — scouts the sands along with his obedient deputy, Bhure (Satish Kaushik), for clues to the killing, he hits upon a trail of the bloody mess that hides a dark secret. His methods of crime deduction seem a trifle archaic; maybe crime investigation in the 1980s India was not as smart as it is today. Well, Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, and Miss Marple may have arrived decades earlier, but in the sand swept, sleepy Manabo, the clock has not begun to tick. Leisure and lethargy permeate the attitude of a people given to nothing beyond the excitement of watching a woman, a wife — in this case Chetna (Fatima Sana Shaikh) – flip for Siddharth, when he knocks on her door offering her husband a job in the city.
All these fit neatly into the puzzle, but what does not is some of the layers that appear hard to peel — the drug trade and the presence of dacoits that get the narrative veering off the cliff. Chaudhary fails to tie up these ends into a convincing finale.
In this crowded plot, there is not much of a score on the performance board. Anil Kapoor as the cop frustrated that he has not been able to rise in the ranks, does a decent job. Subtle and subdued, he keeps his mannerisms in check to sink into a character that is entirely believable. Shaikh sparkles now and then. But there is not much coming from Kapoor’s son, whose deadpan, emotionless demeanour is awful, given the fact that in many ways he is the most important piece in the film’s game of chess in which each move is awfully vile.
Read all the Latest Movies News here
Comments
0 comment