Cinemaah

Into RGV territory


The vast slum is called Bhool Bhulaiya, which is festering with crime and corruption—the dirtiest and the richest part of the city, as Faruk Kabir’s film Allah Ke Banday describes it.

The film in dark, RGV style follows the lives and criminal activities of two young criminals Vijay and Yakub (the kids playing them are excellent), who end up in a juvenile home, where they encounter violence and cruelty, emerging as hardened criminals (Sharman Joshi and Faruk Kabir).
They return to their slum, team up with their childhood cohort (Zakir Husain) and form their own gang.  There is more violence, mostly run-of-the-mill events, and then a kind of attempt at redemption. 

The first half of the film has some wrenching moments, in the way kids are treated in juvenile homes (Naseeruddin Shah makes an appearance as a nasty warden, and later, Atul Kulkarni as a reformer), but after that there is not much to grip the audience.

It’s not even as if the film is saying something new, or putting forward a clear point of view. It just seems as if it wants to use the darkness and violence as a curiosity. Still, it is a decent first effort, the performances are efficient, but it’s the lack of novelty that let’s  the film down.