JOIN USBadlapur
Hindi (A) Director: Sriram Raghavan
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqi, Varun Dhawan, Vinay Pathak, Divya Dutta, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Yami Gautam, Kumud Mishra
Revenge is a dish best served cold. Also, revenge is sweet. Ergo, revenge is ice cream. Unfortunately, in case of “Badlapur”, it is the ice cream served in wedding receptions where a thousand guests are insistently overfed.
As soon as you think “this is the end”, some more is served, and you try to smile and dig into what is fast turning into goop. It starts promisingly: The audience is treated to a great beginning of a story, as Pune-residents Misha (Yami Gautam) and son Robin become casualties in a robbery and chase. While one perpetrator escapes, the other, Layak (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), is caught.
Distraught advertising professional Raghav/Raghu (Varun Dhawan) rushes to hospital, but can do little for his family. Layak claims his partner Jayant did all the killing, and he was merely a driver, but is imprisoned for 20 years. The money is never recovered, despite the efforts of the investigating officer (Kumud Mishra). And Raghav seeks refuge in a spartan home in Badlapur, having had little success in pumping information from the prostitute (Huma Qureshi) Layak loves.
Fifteen years later, a social worker (Divya Dutta) turns up at Raghav's door seeking clemency for terminally-cancer-afflicted Layak, and things soon lead him to Harman (Vinay Pathak) and his wife (Radhika Apte). However, the revenge saga has somewhat petered out by then. The editing and some sterling acting by Nawazuddin, Pathak and Mushra keep you interested, but barely. Dhawan is a refreshing change, but lets down his menacing aura too often.
In all, “Badlapur” promised an execution like that of Daphne du Maurier, one of whose books ends up on screen and could well have inspired plot points, but it has turned out to be a garbled mess. Asking the audience to believe a hole-riddled plot and wayward script is simply too much to demand.