 "Wazir: Twists, turns and a smattering of Kashmir")
Listening to the lilting voices of Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal at 9.30 am on a weekday seems like a good way to start the day. The Farhan Akhtar- and Amitabh Bachchan-starrer, Wazir, opens with Tere Bin, a romantic ode to Danish Ali (Akhtar) and his wife, Ruhana Ali (Aditi Rao Hydari). While the melody is soothing, the accompanying visuals look like a behind-the-scenes video of some advertisement shoot. Hydari's smile and Akhtar's stilted expressions appear jarring, where the two actors seem painstakingly aware of the camera. Danish, an anti-terrorism squad police officer, is married to Ruhana, a kathak dancer. All is well till their daughter dies in an encounter with "terrorists". With Ruhana blaming Danish for their daughter's death, he sets out on an unrealistic warpath, almost single-handedly taking down an entire sleeper cell.
Enter Pandit Omkarnath Dhar (Bachchan), a wheelchair-bound former chess champion who teaches the sport to children. While the posters and teaser shots of the film show some sort of tension between the characters of Akhtar and Bachchan, Bachchan's on-screen persona is uncomfortably amicable. Dhar used to teach Danish's daughter how to play chess and thus begins a series of serendipitous connections. Panditji, as he is fondly called, has an agenda of his own. His daughter, he suspects, has been killed by the union welfare minister, Yazaad Qureshi. Danish, who starts chess lessons at Dhar's, soon discovers that there may be a connection between the deaths of the two daughters.
Manav Kaul as Qureshi lives up to his narrowly-envisioned character, playing the "bad guy" quite well. One wishes that Vidhu Vinod Chopra had steered clear of the Kashmir issue rather than touching upon it with just a smattering of information. Dhar, a Kashmiri pandit, is friends with a Muslim. Qureshi, the face of peace in the valley, is really just the villain. And in all this, Dhar, the chess-master, is smarter than everyone combined. If only things could really be that simple.
To the film's credit, the trope of chess is used quite organically and comes together especially well in the final dance-drama. The metaphor of the bishop, rook and the pawn seem to be the only unifying factor in a scattered and confusing plot with weak acting.
Mercifully, Neil Nitin Mukhesh's cameo is too short to register - a minute longer and his hamming would have become more obvious. The same goes for John Abraham, who is, surprisingly, more bearable than Mukesh. Hydari plays the part of the wounded mother and wife to a tee, but fails to kindle any real emotion in the heart of those who are watching her on-screen. In terms of styling, she looks ethereal, but her part in the film largely ends there.
Bachchan offers a sense of déjà vu with his performance, a mould that he briefly broke out of in Piku. I fail to understand why his hair is styled the way it is - not only does it not add to his character, it takes my attention away from Bachchan's acting. Akhtar looks great on-screen, but much like Hydari, his looks do little for his character.
Akhtar and Bachchan, though, share a watchable on-screen presence. Their scenes together are the most memorable in the film, though not half as remarkable as they appeared in the promotional videos and trailers. The music, composed by various music composers such as Advaita, Shantanu Moitra and Ankit Tiwari, is wonderfully refreshing. "Atrangi Yaari" in Bachchan's and Akhtar's haunting voices is both foot-tapping and soulful. The rest of the music, too, is woven into the narrative, free of any unnecessary dream sequences.
With a twisted and implausible plot, Wazir qualifies for the one-time-watch category, but is incapable of going beyond that.
