 "Movie review: Violence versus violence in NH10")
If you had even an iota of doubt that Anushka Sharma-starrer NH10 was not violent, the red-tinted Central Board of Film Certification certificate should be your clue. The opening scenes are soft, with a couple’s benign chatter the only background score to the camera panning through a familiar Gurgaon landscape.
Fifteen minutes into the film, one sees a lone Sharma driving an SUV back home, while her husband, Arjun, stays back at an office party. In comes the second clue, and here I must alert for spoilers — a violent attack on Sharma’s car, which leaves a scar on her forehead and her psyche.
Arjun, essayed by Neil Bhoopalam of No One Killed Jessica and Shaitan fame, accompanies her to the police station and there, the third clue stares you in your face. The police officer suggests Arjun get a gun licence for his wife. And just like that, the film introduces its trope of urban vigilantism, a sly suggestion that if you are to survive Gurgaon, there is no other choice.
Welcome to Gurgaon, the “badhta bachcha” and the land of uncivilised brutes who need to be saved (or taught a lesson or two) by Arjun and Meera, Sharma’s character on-screen. If the visual pain of seeing brutal violence on screen isn’t enough, you have a strategically-placed microphone in every scene that dutifully enhances the sound of every bone breaking and people being killed far too slowly.
Forty-five minutes later, I am only too anxious for the interval, or, heaven have mercy, the film to end. The plotline is simple — a road trip gone wrong. Wait a second, wasn’t that what Alia Bhatt and Randeep Hooda-starrer Highway was about? I asked myself this question several times in the film — when Sharma is running through fields in Haryana to escape her captors, when she laughs with hysteria, when she screams in pain and on seeing Bhoopalam’s face, which looks exactly like Hooda’s.
The only difference is that while Bhatt was able to successfully juxtapose young innocence with mature emotions, Sharma’s acting is quite contrived. Plus, with the lingering image of her in an episode of Koffee with Karan last year, where her lips were more pronounced that her canary yellow dress, I couldn’t help but find her teary-eyed, bloodstained face comical.
Fifteen minutes into the film, one sees a lone Sharma driving an SUV back home, while her husband, Arjun, stays back at an office party. In comes the second clue, and here I must alert for spoilers — a violent attack on Sharma’s car, which leaves a scar on her forehead and her psyche.
Arjun, essayed by Neil Bhoopalam of No One Killed Jessica and Shaitan fame, accompanies her to the police station and there, the third clue stares you in your face. The police officer suggests Arjun get a gun licence for his wife. And just like that, the film introduces its trope of urban vigilantism, a sly suggestion that if you are to survive Gurgaon, there is no other choice.
Welcome to Gurgaon, the “badhta bachcha” and the land of uncivilised brutes who need to be saved (or taught a lesson or two) by Arjun and Meera, Sharma’s character on-screen. If the visual pain of seeing brutal violence on screen isn’t enough, you have a strategically-placed microphone in every scene that dutifully enhances the sound of every bone breaking and people being killed far too slowly.
Forty-five minutes later, I am only too anxious for the interval, or, heaven have mercy, the film to end. The plotline is simple — a road trip gone wrong. Wait a second, wasn’t that what Alia Bhatt and Randeep Hooda-starrer Highway was about? I asked myself this question several times in the film — when Sharma is running through fields in Haryana to escape her captors, when she laughs with hysteria, when she screams in pain and on seeing Bhoopalam’s face, which looks exactly like Hooda’s.
The only difference is that while Bhatt was able to successfully juxtapose young innocence with mature emotions, Sharma’s acting is quite contrived. Plus, with the lingering image of her in an episode of Koffee with Karan last year, where her lips were more pronounced that her canary yellow dress, I couldn’t help but find her teary-eyed, bloodstained face comical.
Acting aside, the plot is disturbingly problematic in the way it treats social issues like honour killings, skewed sex ratio and lawlessness. With stray comments like “the Constitution only reaches till the malls in Gurgaon” and a policeman thanking the caste system for maintaining social balance in Haryana, the film offers a monolithic view of a mostly rural state through the eyes of its urbanised neighbour.
This isn’t to say that honour killings and the gotra system in Haryana are not something that blot its society, but the film finds an answer to that problem with the old adage — “an eye for an eye”. Vigilantism and revenge take over the plot in the second half, though Deepti Naval offers a refreshing surprise with her candid acting.
Her character too, tries to be nuanced, showing how women, even if they are the heads of a panchayat, are equal players in perpetrating patriarchy. But the problem lies in how the plot counters lawlessness with more lawlessness, where the power of avenging honour and murder rises above everything else. Who needs the law when you have guns and Pajeros?
The cinematography and production quality are just about right, with certain scenes giving you a migraine because of the way the camera pans. This movie is also Sharma’s first stint as a producer, though that isn’t much to write home about. Thankfully, the film is devoid of any profound monologues or superfluous songs, perhaps the only saving grace.
The last 15 minutes are what stayed with me, including pithy comments like “jo karna tha, woh karna tha (one has to do what needs to be done)”. In the context of recent movie bans, my conjecture is that someone will protest against the film and the light it shows Haryana in. Watch it while you can, but only if you can stomach the violence.