The Nanavati Murder case was a sensation in its day. It was a simple case of a marriage gone wrong that turned into a resounding reflection of the foibles of the mindset of urban India. People feted Commander K.M Nanavati as a hero, the drawing rooms were buzzing with discussions on the moral issues at play, street-peddlers were selling toy guns named after the naval officer and subsequently, there was enough material ripe for pulp fiction.
Indeed, cinematic and literary versions of the same tale have proved that much can be indeed done from the crux of the case. 'Yeh Raastein Hai Pyaar Ke' was a Bollywood entertainer, replete with melodrama and musical numbers while Gulzar's 'Achaanak' humanized the killer and played fast and loose with the facts while serving exceptionally unconventional stuff for audiences. And oh, yes, we had a great Amit Trivedi song from 'Bombay Velvet' recently that spoke about the tumultous case of infidelity in the center of it all.
Yet, all have been instances when the creative licence taken provided for something genuinely interesting.
Tinu Suresh Desai's 'Rustom' is none of that. Inspired by the case to a greater extent than any of the films mentioned above, this is however a completely dull and dreadfully ham-fisted affair that would not be any different from a typical 90s-style romantic thriller- complete with a soppy moment with chiffon sarees and rain.
And this is all indeed tragic, given the sheer pulpy material that the film could have squeezed to fascinating effect. The story for 'Rustom' might have sounded absolutely smashing on paper, even with the creative liberties taken with the facts. With a retro-fitted Bombay as the backdrop, with the controversial nature of the case, the twists and turns that can set the courtroom on fire, and even some welcome touches of the 60s caper genre, it could have been a hell of a film- a rattling yarn of drama and intrigue.
What it turns out to be is merely a farce, a parody of the scandal, a sizzling story turned into a sham.
We start disastrously enough. Akshay Kumar looks unconvincing already as the eponymous suave and self-assured Naval officer- his tightly contrived features obliterating all traces of emotion and personality. And this is much like the rest of the film as well- it might be set against one of the golden years of the city and even the period settings might be suggesting that. But all of it is utterly lifeless and artificially constructed, for all the talk of the film's attention to detail.
The 50s Bombay of the film looks gaudy, visually overblown and, also, rendered too much like a digitally created postcard. It is fine to add a bit of a post-modern revisionist zing to the look and feel but 'Rustom' does not even have the snap to warrant such gloss. The walls are perfectly painted, the cars are squeaky shiny, the colors and hues are perfectly painted as if new and the striped sofas and four-poster beds are completely without creases. There are some occasionally slick touches- like when Santosh Thundiyil's mostly hurried and harried camera lingers on the innards of a busy ship, an underlit police station where suspects and witnesses are being interrogated, or a towel hung on an otherwise perfectly decorated wall- but this is less of a city and more of a studio version of the same, with all perfectly sorted bookshelves and bedrooms and boudoirs looking as if being displayed in a furniture outlet.
So much for the thickly laid, tasteless 60s flavour. Next comes the plot. It starts off in the right place, a fine blend of Bollywood romantic flashback and the crucial incident staged with a fair amount of deftness. Things, however, go steadily downhill from then onwards though there is an interesting conspiracy angle introduced somewhere halfway into the film and some inter-community rivalry shoehorned into the main gist of the case.
And even if the film had developed even any of these strands a bit more compellingly till the end, it could have added some fireworks to 'Rustom'. Nah, Desai and writer Vipul K Rawal are merely interested in decorating their title figure- and yes, even his wife- as merely innocent in face of a larger game against them. And that is what is done in most painfully cliched and obvious way possible.
And that is where the film loses all its potential and becomes a truly horrific Bollywood yarn of the worst order, populated with badly caricatured characters with hammy performances to go along. Esha Gupta shows up as a horrid femme fatale, whose idea of being the same is smoking on a cigarette, pouting with red lipstick, and baring her cleavage, as if all those things will do for lustful allure. Arjan Bajwa, as the 'other man' wearing loud technicolor clothes and the expression of a smug scoundrel, is painfully given too much leg space while Kumud Mishra's portly scoop scavenger Billimoria is a bad caricature of a real-life newspaper mogul, merely there for some lame comic relief. Anang Desai makes for a terrible judge, trying to silence the court as if it was his family of fools in the TV series 'Khichdi' and Sachin Khedekar is disastrously hammy and overblown as a prosecution lawyer, with his eyes popping out in bewildered rage as he makes a grand farce of courtroom proceedings, robbing them off their potential intrigue.
Ileana D'Cruz' Cynthia spends the entire film as an unsmiling wilting wall-flower, looking as fake as the settings around her. The only actor, who brings some heat to the proceedings, is Pavan Malhotra as an unusually sharp and shrewd police detective, who also steps in the film's only well-written scene to play a little game of chess with Rustom, who seems to be forever clad in his starchy uniform.
The entire film is filled with theatricality- even extras say their lines out loudly as if that will matter; and the film becomes interesting only remotely when it sticks to the facts of the actual case- and a few stray touches, like when we see those same toy guns being peddled outside the court or when we see Billimoria gloating over some of the more eventful Bombay happenings that he had covered.
All in all, this is a tacky film, which, at one point, even has men wearing 40s-style bomber jackets when sitting together, making illegal deals. It has a solid, pulpy story that could have been told with real finesse and actual zing but 'Rustom' wastes away all potential in sloppy direction, awful casting choices and such a glaring lack of subtlety or insight that makes it a terrible dreary affair.
My favourite fictional account of the case is a rollicking chapter from Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children'- in which a pre-adolescent Saleem Sinai sets into motion the entire scandal with beautifully elaborate, devilishly inventive subterfuge, which I would hate to reveal. Desai's film could have been that racy and ribald but it is trying too hard to be a serious film when all it is merely trashy pulp. This is basically a Shobhaa De paperback trying to be a Sidney Sheldon-style thriller that ends up being a sexless Mills And Boons volume.
My Rating- 1.5 Stars Out Of 5.
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