Halla Bol

Small-town street theatre enthusiast becomes big Bollywood star, loses his moorings, and finds them again: Rajkumar Santoshi8217;s new film takes you through Ashfaqe Khan8217;s rocky journey to stardom and selfhood, with mixed results.

Santoshi8217;s penchant for picking up socially relevant themes gives Halla Bol resonance. A Jessica Lal type murder we don8217;t see the girl refusing a drink, but the two characters who shoot her at a swish party, could well be variants of Manu Sharma brings Ashfaqe Ajay Devgan now known as Samir Khan, to the brink. He is a witness to the crime 8212; sees the dying girl crumple to the floor, and the two power-drunk killers leaving with a gun in their hand, and he does what all let8217;s-not-get-into-controversy celebs are wont to: refuses to be involved.

It also brings a taut, well-executed first half to an end. Post interval, Santoshi does what he has done in most of his films with the exception of Ghayal, and Damini 8212; crowds the stodgy screenplay with too much, and fritters away the advantage he8217;s built up. Corrupt cops, bhrasht netas, and mega-rich businessmen jostle with Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists. Snarky sideswipes abound, against the businessman, who is the politician8217;s Darshan Zariwala lackey, and a recognisable south Indian liquor baron, as well as against superstars endorsing a 8216;cooling hair oil8217; who8217;ve obviously never used it gasp, that8217;s Shah Rukh. They create an instant8217;s shock value. So does action hero Samir Khan8217;s supreme act of shaming the shameless minister, by using his the minister8217;s priceless Persian carpet as a piss-pot. But the impact of these moments gets lost in the muddle.

The controlled Devgan is, as always, good to watch. Funnily, he8217;s almost not there in the second-half, dominated by Pankaj Kapur who plays a reformed Chambal-ka-daaku, now an activist nukkad natak-kar. Eyes lined with kohl, and delivering thunderous dialogue with ease, Kapur is completely over the top, but completely memorable. Zariwala is more caricature than real, but again, like a good theatre man, keeps our attention with him. Devgan watches from the sidelines; as does his voice-of-conscience wife Vidya Balan, who desperately needs a voice modulation coach if she wants to stop sounding exactly the same in all her films. She has even less to do than him.