 "Tanned and deadly")
Style over substance doesn't always work - unless, of course, you are Quentin Tarantino. Or, you have someone like Kangana Ranaut, an actor who seems to have blossomed overnight, seeing it through. Had it not been for Ranaut, the desi Tarantinoesque Revolver Rani, which, to begin with, is little more than cut-and-dried sequences put together, would have been a very forgettable film.
First a look at the story, which is by no means original, though it has enough gunpowder to make it a thriller. The gun-wielding, trigger-happy Alka Singh (Kangana Ranaut) is a feared woman in the Bhind-Morena-Gwalior area of Madhya Pradesh. Having recently lost an election to her rival, Udaybhan Tomar (Zakir Hussain), she hopes to wrench power back from him with help from her Balli Mama (Piyush Mishra). Her love interest is Rohan Mehra (Vir Das) who dreams of making it big in Bollywood and finds in Alka Singh the perfect, though not always the most stable, ladder to stardom. She first notices him at a 'Crazy Underwear Chambal Dud No 1' contest where she is the chief guest. All this is taking place in the exciting Chambal, once the land of the dacoits where bullets and barood still call the shots.
Made like a Bollywood B-grade film, with a good amount of kitsch, Revolver Rani makes no pretence of being cerebral. But those with discerning eyes and ears will catch the nuanced satirical takes that debutant director Sai Kabir has deftly played with. For example, the news anchor is a classic, if stereotypical, representation of some of the TV anchors who will say anything they please, will give a saas-bahu twist to news stories and will get famous quotes by famous people infamously wrong.
The dialogues in Chambal dialect have been executed perfectly. Aung San Suu Kyi, whose strife Alka Singh equates with her own, becomes 'Aung Sang Sukhi'. Real-life political undertones too have been cleverly captures, like the time when Alka Singh alleges that her rival took money from a mining company called Siddhanta while making a case for adivasis.
A tanned Ranaut with kohled eyes turns gender roles and perceptions on their head in her relationship with her toyboy Rohan. "I will marry you," she decides for both of them when she learns she's pregnant. "Forget career, focus on the baby," she tells him at another time. Equally at home in Turkish pants and sunglasses, and metallic brassieres from "Benice" (Venice), she is the soul of the film. That soul instantly goes missing and despite the talented and versatile Piyush Mishra, the film nosedives in the second half as Ranaut is temporarily drugged and put out of action so that the rather weak and convoluted plot can be taken forward. She does salvage it a bit when she returns, but it's not the same anymore. The Ranaut who returns after the interval is not 'Revolver Rani' but a woman who is expecting a baby and who would rather be a "housewife" and pack "lunch dabbas" for her husband. How, when and why did a teddy bear replace her gun? This transitional leap in her personality hasn't been executed convincingly. In fact, it disappoints. What, however, doesn't is the film's music, which is alive and eccentric, much like the lady with the revolver. There is also a number by Asha Bhosle, who, at 80, still has the voice of a 25-year-old.
There's not much to say about Vir Das. He can act, but he's not a patch on Ranaut. She is both the man and the woman of the film. Not many star actors would be pleased to hear this. Would that bother Revolver Rani? She'd probably shrug and say: "Ab mard ko bhi dard hoga."
Watch it. For Ranaut. And for the cinematic experiment Kabir has pulled off.
First a look at the story, which is by no means original, though it has enough gunpowder to make it a thriller. The gun-wielding, trigger-happy Alka Singh (Kangana Ranaut) is a feared woman in the Bhind-Morena-Gwalior area of Madhya Pradesh. Having recently lost an election to her rival, Udaybhan Tomar (Zakir Hussain), she hopes to wrench power back from him with help from her Balli Mama (Piyush Mishra). Her love interest is Rohan Mehra (Vir Das) who dreams of making it big in Bollywood and finds in Alka Singh the perfect, though not always the most stable, ladder to stardom. She first notices him at a 'Crazy Underwear Chambal Dud No 1' contest where she is the chief guest. All this is taking place in the exciting Chambal, once the land of the dacoits where bullets and barood still call the shots.
Made like a Bollywood B-grade film, with a good amount of kitsch, Revolver Rani makes no pretence of being cerebral. But those with discerning eyes and ears will catch the nuanced satirical takes that debutant director Sai Kabir has deftly played with. For example, the news anchor is a classic, if stereotypical, representation of some of the TV anchors who will say anything they please, will give a saas-bahu twist to news stories and will get famous quotes by famous people infamously wrong.
The dialogues in Chambal dialect have been executed perfectly. Aung San Suu Kyi, whose strife Alka Singh equates with her own, becomes 'Aung Sang Sukhi'. Real-life political undertones too have been cleverly captures, like the time when Alka Singh alleges that her rival took money from a mining company called Siddhanta while making a case for adivasis.
A tanned Ranaut with kohled eyes turns gender roles and perceptions on their head in her relationship with her toyboy Rohan. "I will marry you," she decides for both of them when she learns she's pregnant. "Forget career, focus on the baby," she tells him at another time. Equally at home in Turkish pants and sunglasses, and metallic brassieres from "Benice" (Venice), she is the soul of the film. That soul instantly goes missing and despite the talented and versatile Piyush Mishra, the film nosedives in the second half as Ranaut is temporarily drugged and put out of action so that the rather weak and convoluted plot can be taken forward. She does salvage it a bit when she returns, but it's not the same anymore. The Ranaut who returns after the interval is not 'Revolver Rani' but a woman who is expecting a baby and who would rather be a "housewife" and pack "lunch dabbas" for her husband. How, when and why did a teddy bear replace her gun? This transitional leap in her personality hasn't been executed convincingly. In fact, it disappoints. What, however, doesn't is the film's music, which is alive and eccentric, much like the lady with the revolver. There is also a number by Asha Bhosle, who, at 80, still has the voice of a 25-year-old.
There's not much to say about Vir Das. He can act, but he's not a patch on Ranaut. She is both the man and the woman of the film. Not many star actors would be pleased to hear this. Would that bother Revolver Rani? She'd probably shrug and say: "Ab mard ko bhi dard hoga."
Watch it. For Ranaut. And for the cinematic experiment Kabir has pulled off.