Movie reviewed from my view

22/11/2025

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02/07/2025

Criminal Justice - IV (JioHotstar)

"As a criminal lawyer yourself (ex-lawyer)", Lekha, the Prosecutor asks, "What are the chances of conviction if the murder weapon is found but with no traces of fingerprints or DNA?" and Anju Nagpal, accused of murder, says, "I wouldn't know".

If one were to take a step back and try to think how many Indians actually consider, "I don't know" as an admission to ignorance and how many actually consider it as an intelligent and responsible answer, you would, taking the many discourses one sees on the panel of news channels and even in conversations in your friendly neighbourhood, resident welfare association meetings, agree that the chances are minimal that the word "responsible" will feature in the conclusion because expressing "responsible" views is never in the horizon of most Indians.

Using hyperboles, spectacularly worded replies and opinions and projecting oneself as an expert is a trait that is very typical and evident when we consider the news channels, the resident welfare association interactions about which one sees so many in the memes on the social media and in the news as well, as the source of such a take.

Living in India, one usually sees this trait in arguments over parking in residential areas, in small traffic accidents or violations, etc so for most Indians, it is as unimportant a trait as tales of bribery because the both practices have become so normalized that one would feel surprise if someone hears that there is no bribery in a typical situation. However, to skim on without pausing to scrutinise this rather innocuous, "I wouldn't know" would mean missing out on many hidden treasures in human behaviour in our country because unless one highlights an alternate path of possibility, human behaviours and responses will not improve or change in society.

The reason for this review to have this prelude on socio-psychology is to give a solid base for comprehending the take in this review that is more based on technicalities rather than on the dramatic elements so, let me elaborate on the technicalities that go into the making of a script or a movie.

As usual, let me begin by highlighting some technical aspects on acting, screenplay, script writing and direction and in the process, juxtaposition those aspects to view from a technical perspective while keeping the artistic, aesthetic or dramatic elements in place.

As Madhav Mishra, the intrepid lawyer with unconventional techniques, says towards the end of this season of '"Criminal Justice", "Let me tell you a story that starts way before all this happened...", this review is also about those aspects that happen way before a movie is made or a story is picked for the celluloid or a character takes shape.

So, consider this part of the review as a hypothesis of how the story of "Criminal Justice - IV" itself could have evolved before diving into the dramatic and aesthetic or artistic elements of it.

The Hypothesis

A scriptwriter or a dramatist, has a certain vision of characters that will play a role in the plot and accordingly build up the character to that point when the character becomes recognizable for the viewer or the reader.

An actor or an actress, draws upon their personal experiences with human nature, stereotypes, archetypes, and their skill in acting to portray that character.

A director or a casting director, also draws upon their own experiences with actors, to know which actor can pull it off and what part of the character will be most loved, given the part is used to reach a climax.

A producer, also from their experience, know which story can actually appeal to the audience and which not.

For instance, a story of a child killing a woman, her caretaker, in a fit of rage caused by her medical condition and her parents, one of them a former criminal lawyer and another a Surgeon, setting out to create an elaborate plan to draw the entire blame on themselves may convince an audience as plausible but may leave them disappointed because, one, it is all too transparent - a murder with a scalpel, a Surgeon, a criminal lawyer to build a case all lead to an oversimplified experience for the audience and two, most importantly, a child's medical condition as the cause of murder does not have the drama in it needed in courtroom dramas.

It is too cold and unemotional as an outcome even though the parents' sacrifice has a lot of emotional appeal to it. What is missing in such an outcome is what Aristotle described, centuries ago, as "catharsis" - the audience needs to get emotionally involved with the drama shown to them and not be left to logically evaluate the plausibility of a medical condition being the cause of a murder.

So, what does the "producer" do when hearing for the first time that it is a story about the "sacrifice of parents" (as the theme of the story) to save their differently abled child from being tried for murder?

The "producer" changes it to make it more emotionally appealing by having a doting father and a "responsible" wife-mother to provide the catharsis by putting them in emotionally charged situations in their relationship with an "outsider", the victim and the caretaker of the "special" child.

So, now you get the story but being visualised differently for you.

A caretaker of a sick child is murdered.

The story introduces the usual suspects - the doting grandmother, a kind of a specially-abled child who shows signs of being "deranged" (Disclaimer: No intent to be insensitive but no other word actually brings out the imagery required because "differently-abled" and "special child" do not convey the same meaning in the context), a composed but intelligent housewife, a surgeon, which is how the father of the sick child is introduced, so that just the use of the word "scalpel" as the murder weapon would appeal to the general audience sitting around a table, watching the serial as a family.

Instant discussions, deductive analysis and denouement will all happen together, when a clue, such as a scalpel as a murder weapon and a surgeon, are presented together for the audience to lap it up!

Much of the sensationalism required in a murder mystery is already achieved in the script and, from a "whodunnit", the story is ready to be taken to the courtroom because the audience has already moved to the next step of commenting to each other, "That is too easy. Why would someone write a murder mystery as transparent as having a murder done with a scalpel and a surgeon found with the dead body of the victim and saying "Help"?"

This is the reason for the prelude on "responsible" ignorance and the hypothesis.

"I don't know" or more specifically, "I wouldn't know" is more a person's unwillingness to be seen as guessing unprofessionally because, in their profession, it may be considered unprofessional to make guesses that are not substantiable or quantifiable.

For instance, software professionals, because so intrinsically related are they to logic that they develop the habit to not use guesses but logic that can be tested and passed, when put under scrutiny; Doctors or Scientists, too, would fall under the same category because they know that making predictions is not what they need to do and so they abstain from it. However, a lawyer or an ex-lawyer, invariably uses premise and statistics to support their arguments may not use "I don't or wouldn't know" as a habit especially someone who is praised as a "gifted lawyer" however much time it may have been since quitting the profession. A Doctor, or in this case, the Surgeon may. It would be in keeping with the profession as well.

If one agrees that the stereotype of a salesperson resorting to lies always or, for whom lying is not a crime because they do it all the time in their real life, is acceptable or, "responsible" expression of views is very rare in news presented in news channels then the hypothesis of a lawyer saying "I wouldn't know" as highly unlikely (at least, in fiction) should be acceptable to the readers, at least for brevity sake.

So, why does an ex-lawyer-turned-housewife-mother say, "I wouldn't know"?

Is the oddity visible not because of faulty scriptwriting but because of the change of the character who was supposed to be the actual perpetrator or was the confusion caused because the original script from where this story took form had some other character(s) as the killer(s) but somehow, the decision got made to change the killer in the story?

Because it has always been the take in this page to do due justice to the movies or the OTT series or even plays, such an hypothesis-based review is not what a much liked and loved OTT series deserves and so, the actual review, on conventional lines, will follow in the subsequent parts.

Till then...allow the hypothesis to settle in so that the subsequent parts of this review provides you with an experience that you don't get when reading the bland "Pankaj Tripathi is fantastic" or "This season deserves 5 stars" kind of reviews.

But why is such an unconventional perspective necessary?

Because manipulations happen due to oversight caused by careless and often times, shallow scrutiny.

Manipulations with story, characters or what a character says, may also affect the performance of another artist, who may have prepared for some other "reaction" but an impromptu, out-of-the-script line stole the limelight away from their own.

Artists lead a stressful life, as we all know from the inexplicable "suicides" that keep hitting the news from West Bengal to Tamilnadu to Maharashtra and probably, it is time for the movie buffs to also wake up and play a more "responsible" role than just writing and reading bland reviews that do not even attempt to analyse the complexities in the movie making industry.

07/02/2025

Layers of lives exist all around us and yet we are unaware of any except our own; other lives and others' lives are like a "process" in a Computer's CPU, getting processed in isolation and known only to those that interact with it ie. their life "process".

Relationships happen in such "processes" and have an outer "shell" called "parent-children", "friends", "relatives", "neighbors", "colleagues" etc. seen by others and values like "trust", "love", "affection" make for the interactions within that "process" that help in solidifying the relationships.

Challenges, boredom, inspirations, emotions, sentiments emerge out of the interactions and a plot materializes.

This is what is the essence of a movie script that encapsulates a person's life or a story in a timebox of an hour or so and to make a story interesting, plot twists and challenges get introduced into the timeline of a story.

How well the plot twists and challenges faced by the characters of the story are handled, defines the quality of the script.

For instance, imagine a scenario where some thieves are bored and want to try something new and so decide to steal in a unique manner - by enabling someone else with private information and equipping them with opportunities and scenarios to effect the theft or a violation.

So, they decide to find thieves who get a "kick" from only stealing from "really good and highly intelligent people" and for which they need lots of "private" information of the person.

And when they get the "excess" information then it serves a dual purpose - the excessive private information can be used to satisfy the ubiquitous, nosey population in India that calls itself matchmaking gurus and thereby, establish trust among many households and use the "trust", to craft thefts in such a way as to make it seem like a friend or a member of the family may have committed the theft!

Because, with such a strategy, the actual thieves would never get caught and even if they were, it could be changed into a "prank" due to the eventual nature of it as in these times, "pranks" are becoming "normal" and not a theft, done by goody-goody people due to that "shell" in which everyone lives in.

Scams, by nature, have many layers of duplicity and hoodwinking happening at various levels of our lives but we are completely unaware of it because of that one word - the "shell". The "Process" of living one's life creates a "shell" that is made up of values like "trust" or "faith" or "relationship" or "respect" or "honesty" or "honor" and the hoodwinking to make a scam successful plays on any of these values and more.

"Hisaab baraabar" tries to show glimpses of the "values inside the shell" - customers of a bank not interested in another customer's efforts to do something that will benefit them as well, because they are living inside that "shell" that does not allow them to relate to the event happening right before them, the "reality"!

Of course being a Bollywood script, the movie has absurdities that cannot be defined as "shells" - for instance, a passenger in a train suddenly turns out to be an IPS officer and also a prospective fiancée and also an enemy of the protagonist and then the saviour as well...and the list of absurdities go on...and this is how we know why a movie script is bad!

It has no "processes" happening in the story that can clearly show the audience the boundaries within which those characters exist or within which the events happen.

"Hisaab baraabar" is like a cacophony of visuals and characters and the way it is made, it is as if the makers of the movie wanted to give the audience an experience of watching something like a "Taarak Mehta ka Oolta chashma".

It can be fun to watch for a certain category of audience, who - the regular readers of this page know from previous reviews - do not mind such aspects when watching a movie but for the other category, the absurdities, despite Madhavan's pleasant portrayal and impeccable timing in comic interludes, may be too difficult to tolerate!

"The Mehta Boys" (Amazon Prime - Hindi), however, is a different ballgame altogether - a "Game Changer"!

If it were not for the Jr. Mehta storyline - a shell - it might have got into the category of a "Saaransh" (the Anupam Kher movie of the 1980s).

The caption in Prime Video would have us believe that the movie is about an "architect Amay" who has to endure a troublesome 48 hours with his irritable Dad!

Don't be fooled by it because it is not and that is the reason why this reviewer introduced all that psycho-philosophical rant about "shells" and "processes" at the beginning of this review.

"The Mehta Boys" is a brilliant movie despite the commercialisation or rather, an attempt to commercialise it with a romantic interlude to make it into a non-Saraansh-like story because, without the Jr. Mehta's architect role and the "Indian" architecture aspect in the story to appeal to the "nationalists" sentiments, the movie could well have been captioned in a single line - as a story of an old, irritable man (not the "irritable father" as the caption would have you believe), who has just lost his beloved wife and whose daughter wants to take him to live with her in her home in the USA!

It is better to adjust and live with the evil that you know than fight against the evil that you don't know.

This is an euphemism, a kind of a paraphrase, of a line from "Strange Darling", a 2022-something-Hollywood-movie about a psychopathic serial killer, that best describes the many adjustments and compromises one makes in one's lives - whether it be of a bank's customers, who would rather not fight it out for a Rs. 27 odd paise but adjust with the "known" evil; or, a "tricky father-son relationship", who exist inside the "shell", seemingly without making any compromises but each not crossing the boundary of the relationship, not because of their "belief system", but because of their unwillingness to face or have to fight that "unknown" evil and so, would rather live with the "evil" they both know - their own stubborn nature!

"The Mehta Boys" is a movie that shows us a glimpse of such "processes" - a daughter who has a life of her own in the USA, with problems and attachments all unique to that "process"; a son, similarly, has one with a set of colleagues, a girlfriend, a boss, an office and ambitions and troubles in that "process"; a father, with a wife just lost, with a home and with a few hobbies and idiosyncrasies, all his own, that make sense only when seen from within the perspective of that "shell" ie. his life.

We sometimes may be told that it is not a "process" but a context, some may call it as "lifestyle", yet others as "destiny" but they all will agree that one thing is common that makes a coherent thread of everything happening in these "processes" - a belief system - that defines how they see their lives and how they go about solving the problems they face in their life.

This may seem contradictory to what had been earlier elaborated however, it is the belief system of almost all the characters in the story that makes them do what they do, including the movie makers!

For instance, that obsession of some scriptwriters to write a "pep talk" - the obsession is all too obvious because of the hurried way the "pep talk" is introduced in the story, right upfront in the movie, with not even an "Excuse me" of an incident (try to imagine it) with Mr. Sen, the Boss of the architecture firm - Sen and Son - who might have been shown to have taken the fizz out of "Architect Amay" with some Boss-Employee hard exchanges and the audience may have been able to relate to the "pep talk" of a glamorous looking female trying to boost the confidence of the deflated employee even before we know what is going on in the movie!!

The "Bollywood imagery" of a "girlfriend" driving the diffident "boyfriend" is too irresistible for those who think it is a sure shot "formula" of attracting the "youth" to watch the movie because, according to this formula-stricken mindset, if a "Chak de India" movie was a hit then it was because of the "pep talk" and so, regardless of the nature of the script, if you want a movie to be successful then it should have a "pep talk" and if the main actor has already worked in a few movies like "Munnabhai MBBS" and "3 Idiots", which all had "Inspirational" as tags then definitely the pep talk should be there - another example of people existing within a "shell"!

It is also the belief of this "formula-driven" mindset that the modern youth does not have so much time and so, a "pep talk" scene will be sufficient to conjure up images of "inspirational" in their minds like, "Look, this is a beautiful woman giving a pep talk to a guy and you know what that means, right?" Whether it makes dramatic sense or not is absolutely not necessary because after all, there is no law against writing nonsensical scenes, right?

Some in the audience, whose cinematic sense operates at the reactive level, would have already conjured up some sizzling s*x scenes to follow and yet others, visualizing some romantic, kissing scenes. Thankfully, both such visuals have been left out by the director so, so much for all the rant!

The timing of an imagery is directly proportional to the storyline's timeline - if not carefully scrutinised, the whole imagery can fall into the category of cheap stereotyp-ism.

This scene (described in such a ranty way above) in which Zara, the "girlfriend", has an over-cleverly written repartee with "Architect Amay" is also one of the reasons behind all the elaborate psycho-philosophical rants.

The intent of such a "needless" scene is in its timing in the storyline, written with the mistaken thought that the "inspirational" aspect will act as a camouflage for the ill-timing and would easily be explained as a "dramatic technique" to reveal characteristics about the two principal characters.

And the complexity - the camouflage, the "formula", the timing - could not have been explained without all the psycho-philosophical rants as prelude to establish the context. Imagine, rants to establish context!!

However, all said and done, "The Mehta Boys" is a hugely enjoyable movie and the less written about Boman Irani, the actor, introducing himself to a group of mourners, assembled at his house to mourn the passing of his wife, the better.

The scene not only shows what an absolutely gifted actor Boman Irani is but also gives a glimpse of Boman Irani, the director.

The camera angles, the body language of a deeply grieving man with the camera not even showing the grief on his face, but just a few glimpses of the man acquiescing to the right and the left, as he walks past mourners and across the room is something that needs to be seen to be enjoyed for its sheer brilliance.

It is probably the most sublime and dignified portrayal of grief ever seen in the world of celluloid and one for the ages.

The scene and the portrayal is so unimaginably good that just this paragraph should have been the review of "The Mehta Boys" - Watch the movie many times just for this scene of Boman Irani and maybe, when history records him as a legend, you will be glad that you watched that scene that made him the legend!

My view

I had introduced the "Game changer" (Prime Video - Telugu) earlier as an expression and within quotes because I wanted to review the movie in the context of how different directors treat scripts and how a superstar adds elements that does nothing to forward the plot, the story nor the characterization but because of some misbegotten perception in producers, a highly successful director and a superstar can make the most normal script into a shapeless nightmare for the audience.

There is no sense in the movie.

It is not that there is no logic but simply no sense!

It is not nonsense but just that - the movie is senseless.

There is no other way to describe the feeling that one gets while watching scene after scene of senseless gimmickry - imagine a man walking sideways all through an entire movie!

It surely means, according to the makers of the movie, that a sideways-walking man carries some visual or imagery or symbolises something that will land on some sections of an audience or at least please those producers or someone who has something to mock about it and who, because of the mockery of such a person walking sideways, will bring lots of people to watch the movie. Otherwise, with all permutations and combinations evaluated, it is extremely difficult to come to terms with it!

It seems that the Indian movie marketing nexus has succeeded in creating a "Fifth Wall" - ie. real life people whose personal dislikes or derision can be included in a movie script and those real-life people will comprehend that the movie is playing only to their senses !! And therefore, they will be so pleased and pampered to think "Paisa Vasool" or, their numbers are so many that they will respond to the pampering by watching it many times!!

Since it is a very convoluted and difficult thing to understand and as difficult to explain, imagine that a person walked sideways as per a physiotherapist's advice, which another person thought apt to deride and mock and so, the movie makers thought it made total sense to include a man who walked sideways throughout the movie!!

One has heard of all kinds of appeasements - from couch auditions to s*xual abuses and r**e scenes - to pamper the "financiers" but this "Fifth Wall" is the worst, not just for the sheer insanity behind it but because of the impact that it makes on norms (not that it is "disruptive" because to be disruptive, it should first have to disrupt some normalcy and there is no normalcy in a man walking sideways throughout a movie!) ie., the arrogance to think that the audience is so brainless that it will easily understand the caricature and worse, that such an audience exists in India or abroad and in such large numbers, to redeem the huge budget of a star-studded movie because, after all, it is on OTT and not in movie halls so the returns is expected not in terms of box office tickets but through other means. And this brings us to what the other means could be.

Does it mean that a powerful, vendetta lobby exists which holds a grudge or considers that someone, who walked sideways at the behest of a physiotherapist, needs to be punished but instead will forget its vendetta if the person was simply mocked in such a manner? It is laughable if it were not so insane to even consider as human intelligence or rather, lack of it!

The best example of some mindsets living in a "shell" that one can do anything with money! Instead of indulging in such madness that puts their own career at stake, just identifying the "intelligence vendetta" group to a normal, bribe taking policeman would have sufficed and would have been so much more civilized than going through such a convoluted way of appeasement!!

Sure, money can do anything but then if such anomalies are not refuted then it only signifies that those who worked in the film need a lot of introspection to do as to how committed they are towards Cinema as an art and an expression of life and not as a means to spread negativity and ridicule in the minds of people who watch a movie for the fun of it and not to have their brains fighting unknown evils behind a caricature!

Maybe seeing such a caricature of a man walking sideways throughout the movie may not have been seemed amiss in a C-grade Punjabi or Bhojpuri or Gujarati devotional movie of the 1970s and 1980s which at least had some "curse of the God" or "the devil" as a justifying theme but in a movie with an actor of Ram Charan and a Director of Shankar's stature, it is as unimaginably bad as Boman Irani's sensitive portrayal of a grieving husband is good!

But, an afterthought.I just can't stop thinking about the performance of Boman Irani in "The Mehta Boys".

Many spouses may actually harbour such a fantasy - grieving heavily for their dead spouse so that their children, their neighbours and friends could see how good a spouse they were, to gain sympathy.

Such characters - attention-seekers - actually exist in the real world so, relating to them is easy but a sideways-walking man, definitely not!!

17/09/2024

17/09/2024

Berlin (Hindi, 2024, Zee5, Thriller)

Briefly, as Sondhi, the Intelligence Bureau officer says in the movie says, "It is a brief that is why it is brief and not in detail.", the movie can be summarized in one line, "Even goonghe aur behre (the dumb and deaf) can play the "intelligence" games that Bollywood and its intense followers think Intelligence agencies do"! And if you are the type who look for morals in a story, there is plenty in this movie, hidden under a bubble of pseudo-realism.

"Berlin" is a brilliantly made movie.

Much of the movie is filmed indoors, with low lighting, lots of dull and grey shades, bokeh-ed backgrounds, when filmed outdoors even if only for a few seconds, closely framed shots - what one usually identifies as belonging to the Noir genre.

The script, the performances, the camera angles, the script and the all-pervasive low and dull lighting, keeps the viewer intrigued and focused on the screen.

The plot of the movie unravels itself around the interrogation of a deaf and dumb person called "Ashok Kumar" (Ishwak Singh), overseen by Sondhi, an Intelligence Bureau officer, with the interrogation spearheaded by "Pushkin Verma' (Aparshakti Khurana), a teacher in a government school for the deaf and dumb.

Pushkin receives an acknowledgement letter for a leave application that he, apparently, had never made.

At the outset, one can easily opine that it is a highly unlikely thing to happen knowing well how government functions work in India but Bollywood minds conjure up the weirdest of situations to suit their story!! The principal of the school, believe it or not, actually delivers the letter to Pushkin!!

You need to cope with a few more Bollywood minutes like having to watch the typical Bollywood actor, who over-acts out of his skin just to project a "normal", middle-class person going about his job and who ends up projecting a weird kind of a character who, despite being a teacher, does not explain to the Principal that he had never applied for a leave and instead uses the excuse that the Principal walks away from him before he could finish his question for not clarifying the situation. In real life, in a similar circumstance, most would run after the Principal to mention the anomaly to clear their own stand.

Fortunately, much of the Bollywood oddities in characterization of its "heroes" settle down into some kind of a boring character that is tolerable but only just so, because the Indian audience is so used to watching this stereotype over generations - that of the middle-class, "normal" person who dresses drably and looks at a ringing telephone on the table, blankly, for no reason at all!

According to this school of thought in Bollywood school of acting, since the days of Amol Palekar and Naseeruddin Shah, the "normal", middle class youth of India has to be a "ma ka laadla", fidgeting (which in their imagination is "cute shyness") when faced with rich women, living alone in big cities in a small room and "obediently" going to meet Sharmajis and Vermajis for "rishtha" with a look (that is "innocent" according to the stereotyped imagery built over generations with their kind in the audience) to their face that projects a moron than a simpleton.

Probably, the thought process behind such a portrayal is to explain how some Indians go around doing anything asked of them, without applying their own mind, which, in fact, becomes a conflict when Pushkin vehemently opposes the instructions given to him because it might frame and an innocent man.

"Intelligence", which is the main theme of the movie, has long been abused in India, fueled by tales of the Cold War, the KGB, the CIA and the ISI (that are frequently referred to in the movie) and many mind games are played by people who, basically, are unruly in their outlook in life with scant respect for others. If they think that the others are wrong then they just act like vigilantes.

One such popular activity (inserting this real life recount because, in India, it is a common trait in people to enact and reenact filmy dialogues and recreate scenes of romance and s*x and even violence in their own life right from their childhood and even children are made to dance like a movie song!) that gets interpreted as "intelligence" is how one set of people try to "act" like the character of a person, a "target" and another set of people react to it with their own "interpretation" of the other set, creating doubts and suspicions about each other in their respective localities and cities just like in spy stories and movies and as described by Ashok Kumar (the dumb and deaf character, that he and his colleagues had begun to fancy themselves as "Intelligence" agents (just like many young girls and boys do in real life, role-playing their idols) because of their interactions with the Intelligence agents and from the shady activities that they observed on a daily basis at the Berlin cafe similar to real life, bogus "intelligence" networks), they, too, begin to think of themselves as intelligence team.

So (to get back to the movie), when Pushkin reaches the address to which he is sent to seek clarity on the strange letter, he gets to know that he is being "briefed" for a task and that he must do it for his "country" that familiar refrain which many spy story obsessed minds take at face value!! He is introduced to the task, which happens to be interrogating a deaf and dumb person named Ashok Kumar!

As the interrogation begins, the audience is told that Ashok works as a waiter in a cafe called "Berlin", which, apparently, is a hunting ground for Information trading between various agents of intelligence agencies.

A novel idea, but more ingenious is the way the cafe is run - the deaf and dumb persons are hired just to sit in between the tables so that one group cannot hear another group's conversation and because they are seated like customers, outsiders ie. non-intelligence agents, cannot enter the cafe as no seats would be vacant for them!

In this context, however, the deaf and dumb character played by Ishwak Singh is a revelation, thankfully in the right way.

Ishwak Singh appears to be an actor who takes his character seriously just as much as Hrithik Roshan did in "Vikram Vedha", who totally disregards any usage of "popular" traits of a hero as most "heroes" in Indian cinema tend to do, and unmindful of whether it'd click with the audience - that one excuse that most producers used to use as reason in the earlier decades to not allow actors to do something original on their own.

Ishwak Singh brings out the oppressed feelings of a handicapped person in a manner that conveys that here is an artist who observes human expressions and behaviour deeply. In a scene with Aparshakti Khurana doing the interrogation, when repudiated, he repeatedly bangs on the table with such intensity that it instantly portrays how we see many specially-abled persons react when they are not believed or suspected.

And in another scene, when one of the Intelligence officers order tea in sign language, the acknowledgement of having understood that the order was for Tea is just supremely well thought out and executed by the actor. Ishwak Singh is definitely a reason to watch the movie. Not to take anything away from how well-executed the script is, of course, and the supporting cast!

Rahul Bose, playing an Indian intelligence officer, is effective and does a good character sketch of a "system" driven government officer.

Kabir Bedi features in the movie and has just about more frame time than Anupriya Goenka, who features prominently in the advertised promos but barely has any screen time of substance in the movie. Was this movie script initially planned as a web series but got later changed into a full length movie? The question arises because of the potential in these two characters role in the plot. Both's role could have easily been extended to include the raunchy side that usually is found in such scripts. Of course, without the raunchiness, the movie is clean and enjoyable as is so no complaints that Anupriya Goenka's character got only as much screen presence however, it does make one think. Why would someone cast a good looking actress if not for the glamour element!

All said and done, the script of "Berlin" has many brilliant aspects and somehow, as many weird episodes wired in, as if as an afterthought (one of them being the aforementioned length of the movie) or perhaps, it appears so due to individualism.

Like the usual over-improvisation (or is it bad sub-titling?) that one sees when bigger stars feature in a low budget film as in a dialogue between Sondhi and Pushkin that has Sondhi saying, "We need to find her and Ashok's accomplices..." and the sub-title reads, "We need to find her and her accomplices..." and the meaning of the two sentences are entirely different.

In another instance, in a meeting between Sondhi, the Bureau officer, and the "wing" officers, Mehta and Mahajan, in a cell, Mehta wonders how a deaf and dumb person could find out about them with no extensive training in Intelligence.

Implying that only an intelligence agent could do or think with common sense and deduce using their own faculties and leaves the dialogue hanging with a question, "Who is this Ashok?" as if the question would add intrigue and suspense when, in actuality, as per the script, there is no legitimate (ie. in the dramatic sense) reason for the question to be asked, even if in wonderment. A typical Bollywood moment of trying to build up something that had no dramatic relevance but which, in fact, influences the immature minds in the audience (the formula) to paint a picture of heroics to the character of Ishwak Singh. This is validated by Ashok, who had already answered the question on how he had deduced about Mehta and Mahajan, during the interrogation, by saying he had used common sense.

This episode in the script, however, highlights a very important aspect, in real life, that has not come to the fore ever in movies but which, in fact, has had an immense impact in India in the form of a match-fixing scandal in Cricket.

That such an "Intelligence" mindset, in the 1990s', had indeed developed or cultivated this idea that common people could not use their own faculties to deduce or to gain knowledge or expertise. Such expertise would have, according to this mindset's reasoning, discredited the instincts and looked down upon it as unqualified knowledge or perhaps, as happened with the most infamous of scandals to hit Indian Cricket, would be declared as blasphemy like done to evolving scientists in the medieval ages.

To put it in simpler words, what Mehta, the intelligence officer, wonders about is that he did not know that common people, who were not trained by the Intelligence agency, could also apply common sense! Possibly because he had never met normal IQ people in his whole life thus far! Much like how if you were an expert in Cricket or if you had instinctive or intuitive knowledge about how a Cricket match would play out then the Police and the Intelligence agency were given license to look at you with suspicion as per this reasoning! This conjecture is further validated by an outburst by Ashok who lashes out at his interrogator, Pushkin, across the interrogation table with, "You are a puppet and so it is inconceivable for you to think that others can think and act on their own."

Delightfully, for those who like to psychoanalyse movie characters, the way the script and Ishwak Singh build the character of Ashok, the deaf and dumb waiter, is pure joy.

Subtle looks, situations and expressions are used to highlight and validate for the audience whatever Ashok reveals in the interrogation room to Sondhi and Pushkin.

How he picks on strewn waste paper left behind by the guests and puts them in a scrapbook like a detective, the quick silver intelligence of Ashok as he looks at the two-sided mirror wall, when Pushkin asks him about visas and passport, indicating to the audience that he has guessed that the Bureau officers are pulling a fast one on Pushkin by not telling him what Berlin actually meant, because Pushkin's question clearly conveys to him that Pushkin thinks Berlin means the German city and not the cafe!!

A psychoanalysis of Ashok's character reveals that the intelligence of Ashok that Mehta wonders about is clearly justifiable as street-smarted ness. Nature equips specially-abled people with heightened senses and coupled with the natural ability, a scrutiny of the events reveal that the intelligence shown by Ashok is organically justifiable.

Imagine a rolled up scrap of paper thrown disdainfully and disrespectfully at your face to draw attention by an arrogant customer to take his order.

The act can arouse even a normal person to nurture angry and vengeful feelings and vow to avenge the insulting attitude of the customer, which is what Ashok does.

He picks up the roll of paper that is a DTC bus ticket and goes to a DTC bus depot to buy a bus timetable and finds the route of the bus to reach Berlin Cafe and sticks posters of a political news clipping from a newspaper on the bus stops that Mehta or Mahajan were likely to board or deboard at. And the rest is scintillating to watch. However, the disturbing point that reveals itself with the above recount is that, in real life, there did exist a mindset or perhaps, still does that thinks the low IQ reasoning that a common man untrained in intelligence cannot use his or her natural, survival instincts when put in a shady situation and place.

My view

Extend it, or scale it in a social context, and you may find similarity in how some mindsets think that an education degree is important even if a person has years of work experience in the domain. But the really disturbing aspect of it is if this mindset is "systemic" ie. officials in the police or politico begin to believe and practise it and consequently, any reasoning that a citizen or an individual figures out about some societal dysfunction or crime or anomaly may get disregarded or even discredited because the systemic functions don't or won't acknowledge it resulting in the possibility that status quo would become the predictable outcome and not real solutions or improvement in the system.

To put it in perspective, this would mean, in real life, that if one uses CCTV camera for one's security because of suspicious environment factors and discover the anomalies or evidence to validate why you thought the environment as suspicious then such "intelligence", which is just an output of legitimate common sense, would be discredited because the aforementioned prejudiced outlook would disregard the intelligence because it is not done by the Intelligence agency.

And this is not a conjecture because, as mentioned earlier in this review, a mindset is actually growing in the country that has its base on those who practised brainwashing under the garb of research to stop people relocating to foreign countries and considers itself as "intelligence officials" having devoured spy movies and web series on intelligence mind games and they are not deaf nor dumb like Ashok Kumar! This type is made of men who psyche themselves as protectors of the nation's assets (an evidence of it can be seen on the social media platforms in the form of a hashtag phrase "technology/technique should not leave India".

Of course, needless to say, this kind of a research would branch into control and exercising power over individuals and slowly, a parallel "bureau" similar to the "wing" in "Berlin" forms and quite possibly, there are already many such "sub-systems" existing in many states consisting of middle-aged corporates and educated elites playing "Intelligence officers" just like Ashok Kumar and his cleaning and waiter staff at the Berlin Cafe!

In conclusion, Berlin Cafe is a movie that addresses a very specific social dysfunction in Indian society - the "quacks", an expression usually used for fake degree Doctors but in this context, it is fake intelligence (or Quasi-intelligence mindset) among vigilante-like people who use gossip, trending news, opinions about individuals and systems as seen in the B grade movies and the collected information becomes their "source" for all their deductions, resulting in false positives because their very source is illegitimate and made of assumptions, speculations and allegations. The most telling evidence of this mindset is Mehta, the "Wing" officer, whose limited IQ, built on stereotyped notions about people, cannot even comprehend that normal people with normal brains, in the streets, can figure out solutions, too, on their own and common sense is not rocket science. Mehta and Mahajan epitomise the "Quasi-intelligence" that act like a natural foil to real intelligences, without any nudge from anyone, because of the composition of democracy ie. one entity against the other - the government vs the opposition.

Particular types of human psyche form this Quasi-ness.

Visualise the following sequence that could happen in any oppressed family made up of mostly women. If it is difficult to visualise, such stories abound in Sun Tv and in Hindi Tv channels as daily soaps because the audience of such soaps. actually see themselves and their own lives being played out in a surreal form. In such daily soap serials, a woman would be seen as psyching herself, day in and day out, to do something great in the eyes of her derisive mother; the mother, however, is engaged in her own battle, trying to live up to the "honorable" image that she sees herself to be in in the eyes of her friend, for who she dedicates her energies to elevate the image of all those in the friend's family - grandsons, son-in-law etc.

From this point, take the story away from the Tv channel and visualise how the image of another person, living in another city, could possibly be elevated. And the answer becomes using "political clout" from local politicians or low level activists. Promises are made to them that she would do anything for them when the time comes. In the other city, rules are bent, as it is very easy to do - for political alliance, favours from banks, real estate etc. and slowly, over the years, resembles how some foreign intelligence would play with the social structure of another country to disrupt values in a peaceful society. And, at this point, the "story" gets into the circle of the Quasi- vigilantes who, too, psyche themselves and try their "intelligence games" in the form of "honor killings" and the likes and gradually, all the stories play with each other and begin to take the shape of how intelligence agencies would play the counter-espionage games and the false positives appear for the "real intelligence" agencies to sit up and take note of. This, in turn, would churn up more psychotic minds expressing "concern" for each other and other members of the family, without even knowing the other person, with potential psychos getting protection from unknown women and men to please call them when they reach home late into the night!! It never occurs to them as to why a person, who returns home in the wee hours of a morning, need to be protected!!

Just as in the movie, in the real life scenario, too, efforts are made with more cooked up stories to legitimise the false positives, as seen in the scene in which Pushkin mocks at Sondhi, sitting behind the interrogation glass partition, "Isn't making up stories the name of the game? Isn't it what you are doing too?" to which Sondhi replies, submissively, as if in accepting the charge, to please get on with the interrogation.

Simplest solution, in the real world, against the menace of vigilante, quasi- "intelligence" is to ensure that all systemic interactions are "logged" comprehensively with complete encryption to create and develop futuristic data for future AI engines to be able to distinguish between quasi- and real intelligence otherwise, many stories like "Berlin" would play out in many people's lives, especially in the high octane, information highway world ruled by the internet.