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That Shoojit Sircar is an unconventional film maker was validated by his low-on-budget but high-on-entertainment film Vicky Donor. Post that film's success, there were a lot of expectations from him; and indeed with Madras Cafe, Sircar doesn't disappoint. Having said that, he is still let down by his somewhat miscast actors.
Madras Cafe is a first-of-its kind political thriller - a genre that hasn't been explored by many directors. Sircar sets his film in the Sri Lanka/Jaffna of the late 1980s and '90s and plots it around the assassination of a former Indian prime minister. Sircar doesn't take names - so LTTE becomes LTF and its chief Prabhakaran becomes Bhaskaran.
There are a lot of good things about Madras Cafe - no songs, no unnecessary emotional drama. Sircar could have easily woven these into the tale, but avoids them, thus giving a certain documentary-like feel to the film. Shantanu Moitra's background score blends in perfectly with the film. However, if in Vicky Donor, Sircar got all the actors perfectly suited to the film, in Madras Cafe he takes risky gambles and they mostly don't work.
For starters there's Siddharth Basu, who plays Robin Dutt or RD, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief. Basu tries hard but cannot pull off the role, which required someone to look and act the part. Every time he utters dialogues like "I need this information now" or "get me Vikram on the phone", you can't help but feel that he is about to say "your time starts now" like he did during his various stints as quiz master on TV shows. Then there's adman Piyush Pandey in a cameo and TV journalist Dibang in a small role of a "source" in Thailand.
And of course there's John Abraham, who by the way should get credit for producing Vicky Donor and now Madras Cafe. Abraham plays a covert-operations agent. Being a field agent, he ought to be cold, heartless and emotionless. Which he is. Unfortunately, Abraham is also expressionless. Whether he is talking to his wife or interrogating a suspect, Abraham's expressions do not change. He is decent, but perhaps with a better actor in the role this would have been a really powerful film.
Nargis Fakhri plays a war correspondent, and Sircar is clever enough to make her speak only in English. The conversations between Fakhri and Abraham are bizarre as she speaks only in English and he, only in Hindi.
If the main actors are somewhat disappointing, Sircar gets the fringe ones spot on. The LTF militants and assassins look the part and are very convincing. Ajay Ratnam who plays Bhaskaran doesn't have too many lines but is crucial to the film and doesn't disappoint. Rakash Belawadi (Bala) in the role of a RAW officer based in Chennai is another actor who will be noticed for his performance.
Since the film is based on the assassination of a former prime minister, you know what's going to happen, and here's where Sircar's narrative becomes crucial. If the first half of the film is a bit slow, the second picks up pace. Even killings of certain characters are shown without any fuss and don't slow the pace of the film.
If only the actors had matched up to Sircar's narrative, Madras Cafe could have been a far better film. There is a sense of having watched something not quite up there as you walk out of the movie hall, but overall this is a film which is a decent one-time watch.
