The one brave soul. Review on Mardaani

Rampant victimization and discrimination against women in our country is not uncommon, evidenced by the daily newspaper articles as well as news channels.Further, TV shows such as Bindaas' channel's Halla Bol and Emotional Atyachaar do play a very important part in highlighting these issues which have silently been claiming the lives of countless women on a daily basis.

Nevertheless, there have been several films in Bollywood and South in the past which focus on this topic.Yashraj films, which has been experimenting with different movie genres since the past several years has released its recent hit Mardaani, which is about sex trafficking and one woman, one brave soul who dares to end its evil gameplay for all.

Plot:-

Shivani Shivaji Roy(Rani Mukherji) is a tough cop living in Mumbai with her husband Dr Bikram Roy(Jishu Sengupta) and niece. She discovers that a Delhi based kingpin, Karan Rastogi(Tahir Raj Bhasin) is involved in child trafficking and drug trade and is all set out on a mission to eradicate it.However, an orphan girl named Pyaari(Priyanka Sharma)* whom she had rescued earlier to avoid her uncle from selling her, is kidnapped by Karan's men for the purpose of the flesh trade.Since Pyaari is more like a daughter to her, her goal becomes more intense and she begins to unearth every possible secret, every possible suspect in order to get to the mastermind.

She travels to Delhi for this purpose and fearlessly decides to carry out the long standing operation which may possibly endanger her own life or Pyaari, but she is one daredevil who is hell bent on carrying forward this game of cat and mouse where both the cop and the thieves save little opportunity to spare each other. She tracks down one of the main suspects and link in the business, Sunny Katyal(Anant Sharma) whom she believes could give out all the information about Karan and his whereabouts but to no avail. She sets up a trap involving drug dealers from Nigeria who offer very expensive and rare South American cocaine to Karan and Wakeel(Anil George),Karan's main accomplice and partner in crime.As the Nigerians negotiate with Karan and Wakeel, Shivani and her team barge in to nab the culprits, which leads to Wakeel shooting himself.

At one instance, a false case is set up against her husband by one of the goons(unrelated to Karan and his gang)whom Shivani tried to stop from furthering violence.Another instance is where Karan chops off the finger of Pyaari and parcels it to Shivani as a warning.

As Shivani gets closer to her goal, she meets Karan's mother, Meenu(Mona Ambegaonkar) and is late in realizing that Meenu is hand in hand in the business along with Karan.Meenu sedates Shivani and this leads to Shivani's abduction by Karan.She meets Pyaari and several other girls who are forced to work as prostitutes.Her never say die spirit enables her to rescue herself and turn the tide against Karan, challenging him to a physical fight, resulting in Karan getting beaten to death by all the other girls he had kidnapped.

Performances:-

This is one of the most, or possibly the most intense role which Rani Mukherji has essayed throughout her career.She has played strong characters in films such as Raji ki Aayegi Baarat, Mehndi, Black, Veer Zaara, Mangal Pandey,, but this is one movie where there was a complete make over of her persona.Although her acting involved exaggeration to give a manly and tough cop feel, she nevertheless did a good job as it involved a lot of physical action and tough dialogues.She is no doubt, the very soul of the movie which gives it its meaning.

Newcomer Tahir Raj Bhasin, plays a young but dangerous kingpin involved in the flesh trade who manages to escape the cops till the end.His performance was the next best after Rani.

Priyanka Sharma, who played the young Pyaari, kidnapped by Karan, was quite good at her debut performance, giving equal touch to both her characters as a street kid and as a girl aggressively fighting back against her wrong doers.

Other characters such as Anant Sharma playing Sunny, Mona Ambegaonkar as Meenu, Karan's mother, Jishu Sengupta as Dr Bikram Roy or Anil George playing Wakeel were quite good enough and justifiable.

Direction/Music:-

Pradeep Sarkar, who directed movies such as Parineeta, Eklavya, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag and Lafangey Parindey has done a great job of giving life and energy to a great concept by some great screenplay(although violent at times) and some great performances.He has managed to time the performances as well as other aspects of this movie together which made it look a bit different from the regular Hindi cinema, yet interesting.

Soundtrack of this film is unknown except for the track sung by Sunidhi Chauhan "Tumko nahin chodungi".

Overview:

Due to the subject involved and some gory or violent scenes, the movie may be unsuitable to watch with family or children in particular but definitely a must watch due to a different kind of genre and the awareness it creates about real life happenings in this world, which we although hear of almost on a daily basis, but never realize the true meaning of it and the millions that it cripples.