Halla Bol

Director: Rajkumar Santoshi

Small-town street theatre enthusiast becomes big Bollywood star, loses his moorings, and finds them again: Rajkumar Santoshi's new film takes you through Ashfaqe Khan's rocky journey to stardom and selfhood, with mixed results.

Santoshi's penchant for picking up socially relevant themes gives Halla Bol resonance. A Jessica Lal type murder (we don't see the girl refusing a drink, but the two characters who shoot her at a swish party, could well be variants of Manu Sharma) brings Ashfaqe (Ajay Devgan) now known as Samir Khan, to the brink. He is a witness to the crime — sees the dying girl crumple to the floor, and the two power-drunk killers leaving with a gun in their hand, and he does what all let's-not-get-into-controversy celebs are wont to: refuses to be involved.

It also brings a taut, well-executed first half to an end. Post interval, Santoshi does what he has done in most of his films (with the exception of Ghayal, and Damini) — crowds the stodgy screenplay with too much, and fritters away the advantage he's built up. Corrupt cops, bhrasht netas, and mega-rich businessmen jostle with Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists. Snarky sideswipes abound, against the businessman, who is the politician's (Darshan Zariwala) lackey, and a recognisable south Indian liquor baron, as well as against superstars endorsing a ‘cooling hair oil’ who've obviously never used it (gasp, that's Shah Rukh). They create an instant's shock value. So does action hero Samir Khan's supreme act of shaming the shameless minister, by using his (the minister's) priceless Persian carpet as a piss-pot. But the impact of these moments gets lost in the muddle.

The controlled Devgan is, as always, good to watch. Funnily, he's almost not there in the second-half, dominated by Pankaj Kapur who plays a reformed Chambal-ka-daaku, now an activist nukkad natak-kar. Eyes lined with kohl, and delivering thunderous dialogue with ease, Kapur is completely over the top, but completely memorable. Zariwala is more caricature than real, but again, like a good theatre man, keeps our attention with him. Devgan watches from the sidelines; as does his voice-of-conscience wife Vidya Balan, who desperately needs a voice modulation coach if she wants to stop sounding exactly the same in all her films. She has even less to do than him.