REGULAR GUY AS SUPERHERO

Bhavesh Joshi Superhero

STARRING: Harshvardhan Kapoor, Priyanshu Painyuli and Ashish Verma;

DIRECTOR: Vikramaditya Motwane

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Harshvardhan Kapoor doesn’t play the title role in the lm. Anyone could. This is a lm about pricking awake the conscience, so well-written and so successful in downplaying the image of the typical hero. Anyone could be that prick.

On the other hand, no one really bothers. Why should they when all you get for trying to change the status quo is a death in the gutter? What makes this lm an important testament on the need to make your voice of protest, is the language used to convey that urgent need.

Though wrongly marketed as a superhero lm, Bhavesh Joshi Superhero actually tells us why the cult of superheroism needs to be urgently replaced by a more practical and tenable form of working class heroism.

Hence, Sikandar (Harshvardhan Kapoor) is at rst happy being a pseudoreformist spewing reformatory jargon in smoky pubs until something happens to put him on red alert.

The lm has a slow, steady and solid build up to a climactic outburst that is so powerfully shot that it leaves us with a sense of foreboding for the hero whose mask peels off to reveal the face of the ordinary man suffering the indignities of a system that allows politicians to eece and ee.

Nishikant Kamat makes a menacing villain. A politician on the corporator’s level who dreams of controlling Mumbai.

What makes Vikramaditya Motwane’s lm on the extraordinary heroism of ordinary people is its relentless statement on unostentatious heroism. Harshvardhan, in a post-debut role that allows him to prove he has the creative chops to carry a role even when cast as a reluctant hero, steps into the heroic mould without losing his sense of ordinariness.

The young actor excels in conveying the helplessness and growing rage of average youngsters who watch the dance of plunder, but this time it is Mumbai’s water supply that plundering politicians desire.

How we look at Sikandar’s efforts to stop the plunder is entirely reliant on how effectively we accept Harshvardhan as an actor who excels in being in a man who won’t give up Anna Hazare’s dream of re-structuring story. Harshavardhan gets ample opportunity to play a character who gets caught in de nitions of heroism. He is well-supported by two other young actors Pryanshu Painyuli and Ashish Verma who play Harshvardhan’s brothers in arms.

This is a lm that catches us off guard. Its message of social awakening spotlights a lm that is brave and bleak. Shot with a striking sense of the raw and the real, it salutes a wounded

While sections of the lm get unbearably jingoistic, towards midpoint the plot gets absurdly ‘espionaged’.

An immoral spy (who, it turs out, becomes the lm’s most interesting character) from Pakistan named Sajjan snoops into our hero’s hotel room in Pokhran, plants an eavesdropping device and gets Ashwat’s wife to suspect him of in delity. Sadly, it all seems highly improbable and manipulated. By all means, honour the country with ag-waving patriotism, but at least make sure that the lm does not prove unworthy of its nationalistic aspirations.

Subhash K. Jha

civilisation without resorting to the agwaving patriotism of Parmanu. It doesn’t offer instant solutions and homemade remedies against corruption in politics. It tells us all to go out there and try to make a difference.

Just like the producers and director of this lm have done.

Subhash K. Jha