Movie Review - Irada by Suhel Johar

Irada Is An Exercise In Futility

Irada opens with a comprehensive mandatory disclaimer (one gets to read it in every second film now but this week we got to read the same in two films, the other being The Ghazi Attack): "All characters, activities, locations, names, situations and persons (living or dead) portrayed or used in this film are fictitious and any resemblance or similarity to reality is a pure coincidence and unintended. Even though certain incidents may be inspired by media reports, the film depicts nothing more than a fictionalized account of the same for dramatization of a fictional story. The film, its producers, director, artists, writers or other persons associated with the film do not intend to offend, outrage, insult, damage, hurt the sentiments or feelings of any person, community, class of persons, religion, region, state or country in any way."

All right, then it is established straightaway that Irada is fiction but the fact is that the debutante director seems to have borrowed heavily from Julia Roberts’ starrer Erin Brockovich, as the film's protagonists - Warsi and Shah - fight a company that releases poisonous and radioactive chemical effluents into the state's rivers and drainage systems.

'Irada' is a story of an ex-army man Parabjeet Walia(Naseeruddin Shah), who decides to find out the root cause for people in his vicinity suffering from cancer. His investigation leads to a corporate mogul Paddy Sharma (Sharad Kelkar) and his associate chief minister Ramandeep Braitch (Divya Dutta). A mysterious bomb blast takes place in Paddy Sharma's factory for which NIA officer Arjun Mishra (Arshad Warsi) is deployed by the chief minister. What happens next is what the entire film is all about.

The story or the thought behind the plot of the film is inspiring and makes you want to see how the drama unfolds. But unfortunately the execution of the idea is far from effective and lacks depth. The screenplay of the film is so cluttered and disjointed that all the effort in the narration goes in vain. Every frame of the film gives you hope something interesting will happen but clumsy handling on the part of the director dashes your hope again and again. The narration is so inconsistent and uninteresting that scenes seem to just pop up as per will of the director without much explanation. The constant reference to Ajay Devgan's Singham, makes the entire script seem tacky. It loses its seriousness. The tackling of the investigation seems very superficial, packed with hollow, rhetoric dialogues.

What kills the film further is the dreary pace of the film. As a result it becomes really difficult to find a connection with what’s going on the screen. There is hardly anything that one can remember while coming out of the cinema after watching this utterly pretentious film. The scenes and the plot are so loosely woven that the only saving grace of this dragging and boring film is its duration.

The background scores and songs integrate seamlessly into the narration. The camera work is okay but editing is very mediocre. The bad editing make the scenes look disjointed and abrupt at many places.

Director Aparnaa Singh comes up with a hard-hitting and powerful subject which would have made wonders if this movie was presented in the form of docu-drama or with an impactful screenplay. But unfortunately what we do get to watch is film based on a dull screenplay with slow narration and backed by bad editing to make the film a painful task for the viewers.

Performance wise, Naseeruddin Shah is good, but not outstanding. He has only reprised his role with an air familiarity and ease. Arshad Warsi is effective. Sagrika Ghatge (who is making the headlines due to her alleged romantic link up with ex Indian cricketer Zaheer Khan) is highly wasted. Sharad Kelkar and Rajesh Sharma lend good support. Divya Dutta puts in a performance that towers above all in the film. She unarguably is the best of the lot.

On the whole, since no real effort is made at all to do justice to the plot the film ends up like an exercise in futility.