Maalik Movie Review:
Remember Shamshad Alam? The shrewd, tobacco chewing scrap-dealer who appears briefly in Anurag Kashyap’s trend-setting, hinterland crime-drama epic, Gangs of Wasseypur (2012). Amidst all the acting mavericks having a comparatively larger screen-time than him, a raw Rajkummar Rao playing Shamshad still cornered a place in memory. There was a realism in his voice, an ordinary charm to his face which later also became the anchor point to explore socio-political complexities in films like Shahid (2012) and Newton (2017). The actor became the face of a different kind of cinema. Even when he rode on the wagon of slightly popular films like, Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017) or Stree (2018), he instilled a newfound energy to it. All these films were also backed by solid writing. Rajkummar added his own flair to these characters. He was an active participant in the film; he never became the film.
It is a different time now. He has been Bollywoodised and how. His films have almost become a sub-genre, where he plays an underdog, North-Indian small-towner, known to be speaking fast and dancing with energy. The presence of a coherent story is accidental as long as there are enough punchlines waiting around the corner. When the actor was slowly rising up by doing meaningful, alternate films, the massy Hindi cinema hero was having a revival on the side. Now, with the push from South by the Pushpa and K.G.F films, the genre is back. And so, Rajkummar takes a plunge in guns, violence and grows a beard. Rest is all background score.
Director: Pulkit
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Manushi Chhillar, Prosenjit Chatterjee
There is little novelty in Maalik. It's just Rajkummar whacking bones and breaking bad. He plays a dreaded gangster, Deepak, better known as Maalik, in Allahabad in 1990 who has now starting to become a menace for the local MLAs and MPs. He has a worrying mother, an idealist father, a caring wife, Shalini (an out-of-place Manushi Chhillar) and a dutiful buddy, played by Anshuman Pushkar. To stop him, a vile encounter-specialist cop with a pious name is called forth. Prabhudas (Prosenjit Chatterjee) is “license wala gunda (Goon with a licence)” and has a record of 98 encounters. He is the grandfather of all cliches.
As it goes in such stories, Maalik is fearless without much cause and effect. When his trucks are stopped for checking by a newly transferred cop, Maalik wakes up in the middle of the night to humiliate and kill him. The scene plays out in the dark with a yellow source light in the vicinity. There are a few sharp cuts, a change in background music. All the other henchmen laugh in unison at the poor cop as Maalik fires a bullet through him. Then, silence
A scene so tropey that has been rehashed in numerous ways since the iconic moment of Gabbar in Sholay (1975). There are callbacks to Bachchan as well, be it in the slight bassy voice that Rajkummar brings in his performance or the dialogues that reference him over and over. Writer-director Pulkit does the bare minimum in mounting the film. He merely builds on the structure that was already laid by the likes of Mirzapur (2018). If Maalik was a colouring book, Pulkit traces what’s already been drawn. So, we also get Saurabh Shukla as Dadda this time, coming straight out of his Raid (2018) hangover and a miscast Swanand Kirkire playing an MLA. The film sprawls into a long flashback before the interval, showing how Deepak became Maalik. This comes at a time in the narrative when we are already aware of his rage, that he is capable of killing without remorse. The flashback, with a set of auto-mode scenes, merely places his violence in context and gives Rajkummar Rao another moment of glory.
The actor takes centerstage over the story. He is practically in every frame, doing dialoguebaazi, pulling the trigger and making his next moves—all with a dulling effect. This isn’t the Rajkummar of yesteryears. This isn’t the myth he was building. In fact, he isn’t a mythmaker like Allu Arjun, Salman Khan or Yash’s brand of cinema, which works partly on their stardom and partly on how wackily it is presented. So, when Rajkummar makes an entry over rousing background music and stylised slo-mo visuals, it doesn’t land. He is not an actor who can be templated into an aesthetic to automatically generate whistles. Maalik is not the film that can champion him.
His applause comes in quieter moments like in Citylights (2014) or even the eccentric beats of the Stree films. The pleasure lies in what he does in an ordinary situation, how he infuses fury to an unusual character. Remember Shamshad? When Definite’s (Zeishan Quadri) gun jams as he tries to kill him in GoW, Rajkummar mixes his initial panic with a manic energy as he later sets out to kill him with a rod, hurling random abuses. That, right there, is where he creates magic. That’s how he brings smiles to faces. That’s how he earns applause; no gunshot, violence or empty spectacle, just his craft, cutting through the noise