What Subedaar lacks is that element of surprise that makes a film worth the viewer’s time and willingness to engage, observes Deepa Gahlot.
If the concept note for a film about a retired soldier taking on gangsters in a small town landed on a creative team's desk, would it even be greenlit? The very idea is yawn-inducing. The cinema and streaming spaces are just overflowing with uncouth goons. But if a star is looking for a change of pace with an action role -- and Anil Kapoor is one of the producers of the film -- then something like Subedaar could be waved through turnpike.
What Subedaar is about
Directed by Suresh Triveni, Subedaar is set in a riverside town called Kokh (some symbolism there?), where an illegal sand-mining mafia dredges the river and leaves pits that result in children drowning. When the mother of one such child refuses to be silenced, the thuggish brother Prince (Aditya Rawal) of the town’s gang leader Babli Didi (Mona Singh) kills her brother and terrorises the family. Babli is in jail, ostensibly because someone up there does not like her.
Still, Prince and his goons run riot, and her chief henchman Softy (Faisal Malik) cleans up after him. The cops, as always in such stories, look the other way.
Subedaar Arjun Maurya’s (Anil Kapoor) friend, Prabhakar (Saurabh Shukla) takes him to Babli’s mansion to get him a job as a bodyguard because it is a status symbol to employ an ex-military man. Prince’s vulgar behaviour annoys him, but he puts up with it for the sake of Prabhakar.
Arjun drives a new car that his dead wife (Khushboo Sundar) had gifted him, and that red jeep becomes a bone of contention between him and Prince. (Some bits leaking from Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino?)
When Arjun parks in Prince’s spot, he vandalises the car, and pees on the seat. An enraged Arjun forces him to clean the car, and the public humiliation is recorded on phone cameras. Obviously, Prince plans revenge, and the film arranges dozens of skirmishes before the final blow-out battle. With a set-up like this, which other direction could the plot take? Prince’s predilection for urinating in public could have its own back story!
Arjun’s wife had been killed in an accident when he was at the front, for which his daughter Shyama (Radhika Madan) remains in a permanent sulk, matched by her father’s unsmiling visage.
It is a rule in the movies that if there is a female relative -- a daughter in particular -- she will become a bargaining chip between the hero and the villain. As if the Prince problem was not enough, Shyama makes an enemy out of another college hooligan, and the harassment from him adds to her problems, and by association, the Subedaar’s, even though she does not speak to him.
The villain is not menacing enough
There is not much that’s fresh about Subedaar, and the sandy, brown landscape is reminiscent of another Kapoor starrer, Thar. By standards of evil that villains are gauged, Prince is just a nasty punk who is not a strong enough antagonist for a man like Arjun, which is why their confrontations do not have that Richter scale of menace that could power a plot so predictable. (Think Rehman Dacait!) Of course, the villain will be defeated in a film -- that is never a spoiler -- but the process should be thrilling.
Subedaar's star performers
It’s a walkover for Anil Kapoor.
Aditya Rawal tries hard, but remains one-note.
Radhikka Madan has a couple of good scenes, when she stands up to her harassers, but the father-daughter equation is never emotionally fraught because the misunderstanding could have been sorted with a normal conversation.
Subedaar is not a boring film. What it lacks is that element of surprise that makes a film worth the viewer's time and willingness to engage.
Subedaar streams on Amazon Prime Video.
Subedaar Review Rediff Rating:
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