Have we seen this before???. Review on Gangajal

The Quest for a Hit :

Oh what would our desperate Bollywood not do to make a film run….I had heard politicians taking help of film personalities for their campaigns during elections but I guess world has come a full circle (Earth sure must be round!!) with our talented directors now using the names of politicians to get their film into controversies which would make the film an undeserving hit. In this case poor Sadhu Yadav, brother of the Chief Minister of Bihar was at the receiving end.

I had also heard that Bollywood believes in tried and tested formulas, the latest being on ghost flicks. Someone tries it (remember RAAZ) and the rest test their luck with it. But I guess Gangajal does not fit into this category with long time forgotten Shool and Kranti not setting much of a trend both being the stories of an “honest cop” hell bent upon to get the system straight.

Me and My Super Thoughts :

But I still thought lets go for this one. So what if the story has been made over and over again a million no. of times – An honest cop who will at first not accept the gifts of the local goon ”Mai bikau nahi hoon” (You see the stock of the likes of me have gone down so I am not for sale) and then in the end would have him straightened out. So what if I have recently been tortured by Jr Deol’s histrionics in a similar film called Kranti. After all it has two time national award winner and my favourite Ajay Devgan .And thus I saw, I slept and I grumbled.

The Movie :

Prakash Jha has directed the film with Ajay Devgan, Gracy Singh, Mohan Aghashe, Mohan Joshi, Ayub Khan, Akhlinder Mishra, Mukesh Tiwari and Yashpal Sharma in the lead cast . The backdrop is set in a town of Tezpur in Bihar and the movie is based on the infamous Bhagalpur Blindings case where under trials were blinded with acid by the police.

S.P. Amit Kumar (Ajay Devgan) known for his righteous conduct gets a district posting in Tezpur, a land dreaded for its lack of law and order situation. On his way to join office he gets a taste of how bad and corrupt the system is in the area and immediately starts blowing his head off shouting at his juniors that he would not tolerate any nonsense and bingo!! the words have an effect. His juniors who were under the patronage of the local warlord Sadhu Yadav(Mohan Joshi )and son Sunder Yadav (Yashpal Sharma) immediately fall in line like obedient school children mending their ways.

One of them is a potential cop Bachcha Yadav who after a hardly inspirational lecture by Ajay Devgan goes and gets Sunder Yadav arrested. But the warlord manages to get himself out on a bail. Later Amit manages to get two of Sunder Yadav’s men arrested. But when they start to abuse him and the police his subordinates get infuriated and pour acid in their eyes. Now for reasons unknown to me this acid comes to be known as Gangajal (maybe it has something to do with purification of the evil…God knows). An inquiry commission is constituted to look into the matter.

There is a mass uprising in Tezpur against crimes and people start to use their new found weapon quite effectively. Bachcha Yadav is killed by Sunder Yadav and this makes Amit Kumar very angry and his unleashes his own style of terror on the criminals and especially the main culprit Sadhu Yadav. In the end good wins over evil (Have I seen something like this before?). Like it always happens the commission is unable to come to any conclusion for the want of any evidence.

Thus ends a torturous three hour exhibition of the faith the people there in Bollywood still have on police, maybe with all the extortions and kidnapping going on they have to come up with such stuff every now and then to keep the cops happy.

Performances : Ajay (the top gun) Devgan was as usual amazing. I could hardly understand what Gracy Singh was doing apart from making stupid expressions seeing her husband at work. She was completely wasted in the film. All the others also put a decent performance but I think the Bihari accent among the locals was a bit overdone.

In a Nutshell :

If you are not bored as yet with the same stuff that Bollywood churns out every year …

If you are not tired of the good cop, corrupt system and good wins over evil stuff…

If you have not had enough of actresses who don’t have any role to play but are still there and finally…

If you have nothing else to do…

Go grab the tickets of this movie…what are you sitting in front of the stupid computer for!!!