Almost there, but not quite
Sometimes, when you have zero expectations from a film and it manages to surprise you, it’s a delightful feeling. Married 2 America is not entirely in the “delights you” category, though it hangs about nearby. With a little more imaginative and skilful direction, a title that made sense and lead actors with at least a hint of gravitas, Dilip Shankar’s film could have been delightful company.
The title Married 2 America is a contrived allusion to an NRI couple who are married and live in America. The man, Ravi Malhotra (Chetan Pandit), is an engineer-architect who is “married” to his job, hence, Married 2 America. His wife, Anjali Malhotra (Archana Joglekar), however, is married only to him.
Anjali and Ravi’s marriage is weary and dull. He is always busy building dams in poor countries and uplifting their lot, while she walks around New York in deep depression or visits a shrink who tells her that her problem is that she’s a perfect wife.
Busy Ravi is now also tense because the Darbhanga Dam that he built in Saurabhpur, Bihar, has partially collapsed, leading to flooding and the death of 426 people. He rushes to India, faxes Anjali a distress message, and then disappears.
To prove to us that she can do more than just pour juice for her husband and butter his toasts, Anjali flies to Delhi. She meets the Union home minister and then takes the train to Saurabhpur where she checks into the same hotel from where Ravi had sent the fax. And then, with the help of a taxi driver (played nicely by Raghubir Yadav), tries to retrace Ravi’s steps.
The state administration believes that Ravi, an accused, is absconding, but Anjali knows Ravi is innocent and digs deeper, rousing all sorts of ruffians and racketeers and setting off a chain of events that would impress the creators of Red Dead Redemption. This is a good thing, for the film and us, because there is only so much we can take of Ms Joglekar playing the earnest, distressed wife who, for no apparent reason or joy, slips into backless cholis propped up by massive falsies.
Ms Joglekar is not bad, but she has too many songs all to herself and a lesbian groping scene which, by no stretch of the imagination, is pleasant viewing. So I wonder, why was she the lead, that too in a film which has a much bigger star, Shweta Tiwari, in a two-bit role? I have my suspicions, no confirmed answers.
But it is Ms Joglekar’s snooping around that unleashes the most interesting characters in the film — there’s Jackie Shroff playing ex-daku Pratap Singh (after drooling over him in Aaranya Kaandam last year, I’m back to being a Jaggu dada fan), Ashok Samarth playing Vishnu Mallah, a swaggering local dada who does good but is feared and respected, Akhilendra Mishra playing chief minister Bhairon Nath with his signature grouchiness, and Ganesh Yadav’s greasy, paan-chewing waiter, Chaubeyji.
It’s when we are with these men that the film is most exciting. The air around these ageing alpha males — their veins and moustaches twitching — is heavy with the promise of violence. Purring and circling each other, they make you wish the director would just pack off the annoying NRIs who keep muttering “Is this justice? Is this justice?” and let the bad guys have a real go at each other. He, however, is focused on Ms Joglekar and her marriage. Why?
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