Apurva movie review: Tara Sutaria's predictable survival thriller needed more brainstorming and less head clobbering – Hindustan Times
Apurva film assessment: The Tara Sutaria-starrer, additionally that includes Abhishek Banerjee and Rajpal Yadav, affords a weak payoff. It’s now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
There’s been ample discuss of crude language and graphic violence on streaming platforms recently. As a Quentin Tarantino and Lars Von Trier acolyte, I firmly flip a deaf ear to the ethical police, however the place even I draw the road is one thing like Apurva, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s blood-soaked Chambal Western. Additionally learn: Tara Sutaria performs titular character in hostage drama, Rajpal Yadav seen in a menacing avatar. Watch Apurva trailer
This can be a movie the place taking pictures a bus driver’s assistant isn’t sufficient. The dacoit should clobber the poor man’s head in opposition to a milestone virtually solely by the time the remainder of his gang rob the passengers and abduct a younger girl (dragging her by the aisle and singeing her with cigarette ends for good measure). This can be a movie, the place the indulgent screenplay engineers a diversion to have one of many victims of a freeway theft strive operating away, after which you run the poor wretch over with the shiny new SUV he occurred to be driving moments in the past.
The protagonist
A positively cherubic Tara Sutaria performs the titular twenty-something on a bus journey to satisfy her banker fiancé (Dhairya Karwa) in one other metropolis on his birthday. In a flashback, we’re informed that she has tried studying driving and is feisty as a result of she will inform off the trainer — so that you don’t ask ineffective questions later, when she places each of those abilities to good use within the movie. In one other flashback, we’re informed how Apurva and her boyfriend met and fell in love (as unbelievable because it sounds, it was when he got here to see her for an organized marriage proposal).
The proceedings, charged with unsubtle misogyny that’s seemingly a setup for a cathartic last payoff, unceremoniously attain a libidinous crescendo, the place Apurva’s physique turns into discomfitingly topic to the male gaze. I imply, far be it from a gaggle of lecherous criminals to feast upon the common nubile younger girl, however out of the blue, the up-and-coming dacoity outfit’s priorities go from robbing a truck carrying polyester value ₹35 lakh to taking turns to violate their newest sufferer. And the place does all of it begin? When Apurva’s righteous fiancé threatens the alpha brigand of the group over the telephone. And when it’s between two males, after all the girl should pay.
Apurva by no means scares you
The second half is a slapdash try to salvage the mess, with Apurva crying and sighing, tripping and falling over, laying traps and luring sex-hungry dacoits so she will hack away at their man components, and finally overcoming all of them, over the course of an evening. The benefit with which she faints, after which escapes the scene with one other walk-in sufferer is past wonderful. The walk-in sufferer, an astrologer, whose character could be the weakest-written character of 2023, turns into a part of the plot simply so Apurva can use his telephone later. Ingenious, I say.
Regardless of the unappetising lingering over the lead character’s physique and the gratuitous violence punctuating the goings-on, Apurva by no means scares you or makes your pores and skin crawl. You’ll solely end up grimacing sometimes and flinching from the needlessness of all of it. And when the lead character will get into the act, pummeling one in all her captors with a metal bucket and registering her first lack of innocence, you hardly really feel her anger and agony. Her relationship together with her boyfriend, recounted by way of flimsy flashbacks, too, is bereft of the pangs of separation. Sadly, Dhairya Karwa’s character, too, is not any extra consequential than the one he performed in Gehraiyaan (2022).
Abhishek Banerjee is underutilised
The movie is irritating on many ranges, one in all which is Abhishek Banerjee. Having seen the actor nail a cold-blooded psychopath in Paatal Lok in between a string of eccentric sidekick roles, his honest submission to this character sometimes shines from beneath the veneer of a beauty villain. However in contrast to Babu, the unhinged hitchhiking stalker performed by Manoj Bajpayee in Street (2002), there’s nary a hint of vulnerability in his composition. What I do know for sure about this character is that he relishes whipping his willy out and taking a piss to his coronary heart’s content material.
Rajpal Yadav performs the poker confronted ceremonial head of the gang, whose unclear authority and jurisdiction are continually undermined by the aforementioned youthful alpha male of the pack. Whatever the materials, Rajpal Yadav performs this character with an old-world honesty, the occasional scowl on his scruffy face suggesting the advanced nexus of feelings that observe killing your boss, who in his case is presumably a dreaded regional brigand. His sudden outbursts and detached participation within the gang’s actions convey a deeply insecure man, who, regardless of being however an unscrupulous legal, has reached a middle-age disaster (and presumably erectile dysfunction).
Tara does one of the best she will as damsel-in-distress
That is arguably Tara Sutaria’s first hearth and brimstone position, and within the framework of this movie, she brings virtually the proper mixture of damsel-in-distress power to it. What she lacks by way of expressions, she makes up for together with her agitated sobbing. One can not actually blame her, although, for it is a movie from at the least a few a long time in the past, and the chronology of misogynistic misadventure and feminist wrath are far too disjointed and ill-balanced right here for her to even try a layered efficiency.
Having seen the trailer and the poster with Apurva’s face framed by a sickle, it’s not arduous to foretell how this story unfolds. Solely, what transpires is way extra simplistic than no matter your imaginative thoughts, ate up a gentle food plan of gory OTT thrillers, will dream up. The movie ends with Apurva acing the movie’s signature energy transfer: crushing the adversary’s head to a pulp.
Apurva is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
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