Messy affair

Nonika Singh

There are movies that make you think, make you cry, make you laugh. Certainly there are a few that are no-brainer entertainers, and then those that are dull and boring. But here is a film that leaves you stone dead, besides, of course, making you cringe each time the camera pans on the not-so-hot Om Puri and sexy siren Mallika Sherawat getting intimate. Yes dear, as the name suggests, Dirty Politics paints the dirty picture of political landscape and has a murky sex scandal at the heart of it. Oops did we say heart…sorry the film by the way has no heart or anything that bears even a fake resemblance to it. To put it succinctly, Dirty Politics is all that a film shouldn’t be.
On the face of it, of course, it has a lot going for it.  Supposedly based on a real incident in Rajasthan with a reasonably fine director KC Bokadia helming the film, it also boasts of a battery of actors and Bollywood’s finest at that.  For a start there is the gifted triumvirate Anupam Kher, Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, though their reasons for doing the film beats us. And it’s not just these veterans… among the younger crop you have Atul Kulkarni, Sushant Singh and Ashutosh Rana, and yesteryear’s star Jackie Shroff as the bad-man. So what do they do in film that struggles from the word go?
Well, Atul and Sushant playing honest cops Nirbhay and Nischay, try to ape big-time superstars and fail miserably.  Of course, some of them like Ashutosh, as the self-serving vile politician, despite a weak screenplay and inept direction, hold their own.
Others sleepwalk and most especially Naseer, once again playing a self-righteous vigilante, are simply wasted. In fact, the film is saddled with so many characters that you feel for none and least of all for Anokhi Devi (Mallika ), a dancer-turned-ambitious woman.
Actually, she is the weakest link in the film’s armour. She succeeds in neither getting her woman scorned act right nor the bechari girl caught in the cesspool of politics.  As her character is poorly sketched and enacted, you end up neither despising her nor caring for her. Her murder mystery, apparently the crux on which the film is built, is anything but eventful. She has been killed and you know who-dun-it! So what’s the fuss all about? But in the film you have to nail him or them. So the narrative chugs along oh-so-predictably and drearily…and ends up in the court. Up for some excitement…well, the courtroom drama, the pivot of many Hindi films (even when exaggerated), is so inane here you want to scream and run. And run away you must from this slice of dirty politics, which is more annoying than sleazy.
Eminently avoidable…this one we won’t recommend even when it is telecast on TV. Though as it comes with a sprinkling of cusswords and the Adult certification only means it will be cut to size.  How we wish someone had used the scissors for its big screen outing too or at least turned down the background score.  
All in all, the film does a huge disservice not only to those who might have been victims of politicians but also the film world. What ails our politics isn’t the question here, but what ails our filmdom or at least some of the makers in it?