Priyadarshan’s Aakrosh is a serious and often grim and gruesome film that sets out to tackle caste atrocities. Its heart is in the right place, it doesn’t lecture and its stomach doesn’t churn easy. But, it is intermittently engaging and fatiguing.
We begin in Jhajhar, Bihar, in 2005, where villagers in kurta-pyjamas are walking with laltens to watch a short and round Thakur pierce Ravan’s navel with his arrow. As the asur bursts into flames, a young girl slips out with three boys in a car bearing Delhi number plates. Thakur is informed and he and his men chase the Delhi car, along with several police jeeps. It’s dusty, dark and we don’t hear or see much. But the rush and reaction of all suggests tension.
Cut to Delhi two months later where the students of a medical college are agitating over the disappearance of their three college mates -- Deenu, who was from Jhajhar, and his two friends Dinesh and Gautam. The last call from the boys was from Jhajhar, saying they had been arrested by the police.
A CBI team from Delhi is sent to investigate. Bespectacled CBI officer Siddhant Chaturvedi (Akshaye Khanna) and Major Pratap Kumar (Ajay Devgan) arrive at Jhajhar police station where superintendent of police Ajatshatru Singh (Paresh Rawal) is blowing into his vest while discussing virgins, condoms and staged encounters all at the same time. Neither he nor his boss is impressed to meet the boys from Delhi, but they offer chai and advice to return home. But, Siddhant is a decorated officer and a stickler for rules.
Siddhant and Pratap shack up in a small hotel room and set up office in an abandoned theatre. Pratap, we learn, is a dalit who has suffered, is still smouldering, and knows the ways and vices of this land and its people. But, Siddhant is in the lead.
Investigation begins. The city boys talk to Deenu’s jeeja, Rukumlal, but that night itself he is kidnapped from the dalit basti. City boys arrive next morning to find no witnesses, no aakrosh. Just fear.
In the first of several attacks on Siddhant and Pratap, a burning trishul is left as an ominous warning (very KKK, very Mississippi Burning). The boys barge into SP Ajatshatru’s house to complain, but here senior district officials getting wasted around an insipid item girl (Sameera Reddy) tell that them it is Shool Sena and that they stand warned.
The investigation is going nowhere, and yet dead bodies are piling up. Every time some clues surface, men are murdered, tongues are snipped off, dalits are thrashed, their houses burnt. Siddhant has been conducting the investigation his way, with Pratap looking on solemnly, making one grave remark after another. But we have seen what Pratap is capable of.
Pratap, we also learn, knows Ajatshatru’s wife Geeta (Bipasha Basu) – there’s some upper caste girl, dalit boy and a guru dakshina story here. Pratap asks her about the missing boys. She says she doesn’t know anything. But then there’s one cruelty too many and she steps forward to talk of that fateful Dussehra night: Cops, Thakur, netaji and others were gathered around the three squatting, shivering boys in Ajatshatru’s courtyard who was straining to listen to a cricket commentary on his transistor. Ajatshatru was shouting questions at the boys and screaming at Sachin Tendulkar not to get out before hitting a hundred. But he did, and surreal turned scary.
After more innocent witnesses are thrashed and hospitalised, Siddhant puts Pratap in the lead and we say, thank you, Lord! Bodies are dug out, some crooked traps are laid, and justice is served. The climax? Think Inqalab, Rang De Basanti.
Aakrosh travels from Delhi to Bihar to investigate a case of honour killing, but finds itself standing on a dusty, blood-spattered land seething with caste chauvinism. Shocked, the film flails its arms agitating the settled dust, and what emerges is a fascist fiefdom of upper castes. This non-linear narrative is interesting, but the film often loses pace and gets distracted easily. Luckily, it always takes a sudden, bloody turn.
The film’s story employs a fictional equivalent of the Ranvir Sena, exaggerates the scale of several cases of recent dalit massacres, and mashes it all to give a film that often stuns. The use of city boys – who are our extensions – to go in and look at this world is also interesting. Though we don’t spend much time with them in private, we are invested in them. Sadly, several other characters are not considered worthy of a decent introduction. For example, Jamuniya (Reema Sen), Geeta’s maid and dead Deenu’s sister, who is significant to the climax and suffers throughout, hardly has a dialogue.
But I’m happy to report that after duds like Khatta Meetha and De Dana Dan, Priyadarshan is back in form. Watching Aakrosh, I often felt that he was just filming this madness, with minimal interference. The film has a gritty feel and is brought to life by an A-class ensemble of supporting cast. Paresh Rawal is especially brilliant. His Ajatshatru Singh, who sweats, jokes and kills, is the poster boy of loathsome IPS officers.
Aakrosh’s violence is relentless -- bloody faces, speeding vehicles crashing into startled men, a noose tightening around a little neck -- and its dialogues bristle with bad language.
The film’s best action sequences -- roof-top chase and severe ball-crunching – are reserved for Ajay Devgan. Though Ajay sort of melts in the background in the talking scenes (perhaps part of his character’s dalit baggage), he makes the action scenes fast and thrilling. His dialogues are good too. My favourite one was, “Confidence badi kutti cheez hoti hai...”
Taking of which, Mr Wriggly Worms Eyebrows needs to start engaging other facial muscles. Akshaye Khanna’s one-expression-fits-all style is comical and idiotic. Also, in this dick-swinging world of alpha males, he stands out as the only metrosexual. I often wished that he’d take the train back to Delhi and let Ajay get on with the job.
Similarities between Govind Nihalani’s great original and Priyadarshan’s Aakrosh begin and end at the title, not counting a few sorry attempts at drawing parallels. This Aakrosh is more violent than visceral.