A Wednesday

A Wednesday is a recent film written and directed by Neeraj Pandey. The promo of the film showed yet again a bomb-threatened Mumbai leading you to establish an idea about the film as yet another movie based upon terrorism and terrorists. With the recent upsurge of terrorism in our part of world i.e. south-east Asia, we have in past few years seen so many of these terrorist movies that now I am getting confused about which film was that one or the other one. Watching this film was again not a different feeling till 77 minutes (out of total 94 minutes of movie) where from the movie takes a strange turn and the whole context of the story changes. Though I have (not in many movies) seen common man being dragged into some evil job or him taking on the evil men of the society especially after one of his kin suffers the terrorism, this movie here is something different.
It is about a “stupid common man”, as the character introduces himself, who wants to “clean his house”. The house is his country and what he wants to clean off is terrorism. He is not some superman or some he-man who will shave off every evil from the society but only tries to show a path to awaken the sleeping common people. He only gives you a start on which a splendid end can be phrased. This is in short what the director wants to tell which I don’t agree with and I would come on that later in this blog.
The story starts with the voice of Anupam Kher playing Prakash Rathore, commissioner of police, Mumbai who before his retirement (scheduled to be on the next day) is recalling one of the cases he handled. The case occurred on a Wednesday when a man (Naseeruddin Shah) calls him and says that he has planted several bombs all over the city and wants four of dreadly terrorists out of imprisonment. For the purpose of authenticity he also plants a bomb in a police station just in front of the police headquarters. He has a completely worked out plan of action for this and is unreachable. Finally he gets the terrorists out of the prison and with a full proof-plan, gets them to a runway of an air-base. There he gets those terrorists killed and this is the twist in the tale. After this he reveals himself and then follows an emphatic speech about the common man and his sufferings; the same age old speech of bollywood on this topic is repeated.
The screenplay is really fantastic and keeps you bound all throughout. The director manages to keep the suspense of the film till the very end and really gives you a real shock with the twist; it is superbly great, truly uncommon in bollywood movies are such a fabulous twist. The performances are of the highest order. Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah are both, as usual, brilliant. Anupam portrays the commissioner with all its essence and who can be better than Naseer in showcasing a common man; really commendable performances. Jimmy Shergil and others are good in their little cameos.
Now coming back to the topic which I left earlier, it is a good idea to show in a film about common man doing all this. But is it possible practically? I heard somebody telling that this film should be shown to as many Indians as possible, even if only 1 lakh of them manage to wake up, it will bring an end to 4 lakhs terrorists. Really a nice idea!!! But is it authentic outside the filmy world? I don’t think so. Yes, I agree to the point that what is the need to keep such terrorists alive when you know they have taken hundreds of innocent lives, yes I agree to this. But I don’t agree to the point that common people should take law in their hands to do such a thing. Police is there to do that and let it do its own job and let us support them. When an encounter occurs many of us stand against it saying it brutal and inhumane. There I think, we should be supporting our police and yes I firmly believe our police to be given more of the power to deal with all this.
Final word for the film, really “pathbreaking” rather “pathfinding”!!!