Movie: Revolver Rani
Director: Sai Kabir
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Vir Das, Zakir Hussain, Piyush Mishra
Rating: **1/2
Watching Revolver Rani is sure to impact you more than any release in the recent past. For once, it is another example that Hindi cinema is no less than any Telugu release in catching up with the election season and from another perspective, it turns out to be the intentionally silliest female oriented drama made in a Tigmanshu Dhulia-like Madhya Pradesh setting. Kangana Ranaut, after a film like Queen in a quite unlikely avatar of the politically ambitious Alka Singh wants this black-comedy to bear a good mix of her stereotyped mentally destructive mindset in coherence with the over-the-top characterization that director Sai Kabir wants to desperately stamp on her part.
The political rivalry is kept simplistic in totality. It’s a continuous, ever-raging battle between Alka and Udaybhan Tomar essayed by Zakir Hussain. There’s little doubt in the type of the audiences that it wants to cater to. But, the aspirations don’t quite translate into a convincing core when it overtly flickers from being an adult comedy to a political satire and later transforming into an unnecessary melodrama supposedly dosed with realism when you are just about sensing the climactic sparks to be delivered.
Vir Das is the object of lust for this larger-than-life goon. He is a certain Rohan Kapoor or another wannabe Shahrukh who’s waiting for that very golden chance to escalate his aims to an entirely higher scale. He is no different from the urban ‘dude’ that he has often played on-screen. He here dances to the tunes of Kangana and doesn’t have a choice in any of the extremities he is made to face. There’s never a suspicion about the dominant counterpart.
You can understand his possible helplessness when Kangana indeed orders him to turn himself ‘on’ and be an excited companion on bed whenever she feels the urge. Moments like these are occasional game-changers for you and are rare to see a male character, even for an open feminist drama succumb to the arrogant one being treated as a good-for-nothing in front of the opposite gender, just like you see only the often glamorous/flirtatious Kajal Agarwal’s or Sonakshi Sinha’s alongside an Akshay Kumar.
The atmosphere in Revolver Rani is meant to be exaggerated. The lady staying true to her character facets arrives in an election campaign with bullets and tolerates all the responses with the same. Her opponent has assistants who are equivalent fools in the form of Kumud Mishra and Pankaj Saraswat to provide interim comic-relief, formulating mockery-equivalent plans in accordance with the persisting theme. The film’s unconventional energy is not put to rest initially when it has Vir being nominated as ‘ Underwear Dud No. 1′ adjudged by Kangana herself. The political and media stereotyping works well with all the overplay , especially when Piyush Mishra stages a cover-up episode of a secret marriage.
The film’s tone surprisingly changes when it is about to end, for there is unnecessary talk about the softer-sides of a female goon, her need to be a common girl and an ideal wife when she has found the love of her life. Revolver Rani’s weird musings which were nearly enough to take it to another league end there and the scenario has an impromptu serious feel to it. Kangana’s wonderful experiments with her body-language, the smart one-liners and the initial hostility are all reduced to the drains within moments of lazy writing. Just a film which didn’t push enough itself to step out of quintessential doings and focus on its actual aims, Revolver Rani still manages to strike an impact, but sadly gets you tired of its ambiguity for a pat on the maker Sai Kabir’s shoulders.
Review by Srivathsan N. First published in Cinegoer.net