(Starring Rani Mujherji, Vishal Jethwa, Shruti Bapna, Rajesh Sharma, Written & Directed by : Gopi Puthran)
Releasing five years after its first instalment, Mardaani 2 deals with a serial rapist and killer who wrecks havoc in the coaching capital of India, Kota, Rajasthan. It tells the story of Shivani Shivaji Roy (Rani Mukherji) who has just been transferred as the city’s new Superintendent of Police, whose first case she becomes embroiled in is that of a rape and murderer of a teenage girl.
Mardaani 2 begins with an unsettling credit sequence that gives a glimpse of what to expect in the movie. It is very unusual of a movie from a banner as reputed as YRF to directly un-comfort the audience from the word go, as the protagonist visits the crime scene, sweeps the area, issues orders and then leaves, but the camera lingers on, making a lurid swoop and zooming in on to the mutilated body of the girl, all deliberate to warn the viewers that more is to come.
Mardaani 2 is a cat and mouse race between Rani and the serial rapist/killer Sunny (played brilliantly by debutant Vishal Jethwa) that is slick and gruesome at the same time. In a new ploy to unsettle the viewers, the character of Sunny winks at the audience and even addresses straight to them. It is so effective to bridge a connection between the lunatic and the audience that is many times creepy.
Though the film becomes sermonic at one point of time when Shivani appears in a talk show and gives an impassioned speech about the plight of women, which appears hollow and rhetoric, the film manages to grip the audience through its story telling and performance by its lead casts, Vishal as Sunny is menacing, evil, real and extremely convincing, breaking new grounds as a teenage villain, never seen before on Indian screen. Crisply made with 105 minutes of running length, Mardaani 2 is slick and plays to the audience, and effectively so. I’m going with three out of five for Mardaani 2. Watch it for the sheer brilliance of its two leads.
Movie Reviewed by Dr. Sambit Begray