The darkly-comic Andhadhun, has all the hallmarks of a Sriram Raghavan film — from the duplicitous ladies to the casually-amoral characters, from the tightly-involved plot to the surprises galore. If there is one thing you can confidently say about a Sriram Raghavan film, it is that nothing is as it seems.
Once upon a time
Raghavan’s first movie Ek Hasina Thi (2004) was a Factory film. Ram Gopal Varma was impressed with Raghavan’s documentary on serial killer Raman Raghav and signed him on. Incidentally, Anurag Kashyap, also a Factory product, directed Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016), where Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a killer.
Ek Hasina Thi has all the hallmarks of a Factory film, from the jingle-jangle background score and sharp angles to staccato editing and Urmila Matondkar. While she has toned down her simpering and goo-goo eyes, she is distracting in this revenge saga. Sarika Vartak (Matondkar) is a single, working girl in Mumbai. She meets and falls in love with a charming businessman, Karan Rathod. When he asks her to help a friend who turns out to be a gangland killer, Sarika gets embroiled in all manner of trouble. The movie follows Sarika’s transformation from simple girl to avenging angel.
Saif Ali Khan is a revelation as Karan — suave, charming and a complete psychopath. Was it when Sarika asked Karan to meet her parents that he decided to get rid of her? While the movie has its ludicrous moments, it also works as a snapshot in time, when cell phones were just making their presence felt and there were travel agencies that booked tickets — online booking was just a twinkle in some nerdy person’s eye. Though the jail sequences look like an awful rip-off of Sidney Sheldon’s If Tomorrow Comes, Seema Biswas is excellent as the tenacious cop.
Judas kiss
Ek Hasina Thi was followed by Johnny Gaddaar (2007). Raghavan in an interview to this writer said James Hadley Chase thrillers were a guilty pleasure and the movie is a homage to Chase and Vijay Anand movies. The film has classic noir elements of giddying plot twists, greedy men, unfaithful wives, rain and lots of dirty violence and money. Neil Nitin Mukesh made an assured début as the ambitious Vikram, whose world collapses upon him as he tries to dig himself out of a series of sticky situations. Among the many delicious giveaways in the film, is the book Vikram reads on the train — Chase’s The Whiff of Money.
Meet Mark Girland
The Whiff of Money is the fourth and last book by Chase featuring the womanising spy, Mark Girland, following This is For Real, You Have Yourself a Deal and Have This One on Me.
- James Hadley Chase, who has also used many pseudonyms, has written many works that have found favour on screen, with nearly 50 of them having been made into movies.
In the same interview, Raghavan said Girland was the original inspiration for his Agent Vinod (2012). The troubled spy film with Saif and Kareena Kapoor in the lead was a mixed bag with some things that worked brilliantly and others that collapsed spectacularly.
Best served cold
And that brings us to Badlapur (2015), where Varun Dhawan plays Raghu, who waits for 15 years to avenge the death of his wife and son, who become collateral damage after a bank robbery. The movie has been criticised for its misogyny, and women do come to a sticky end with alarming regularity. Badlapur is however a fascinating study of the emptiness of revenge. When one of the bank robbers, Liak (Nawazuddin nails it) tells Raghu, he killed in a panic and not cold-bloodedly like Raghu, it cuts to the quick.
Raghavan has been quoted saying he would like to explore other types of thrillers, and we are guaranteed thrill rides through the seamy sides with quirky characters for company.