Treachery and villainy gift-wrapped in chaste white
FILM: Daddy
CAST: Arjun Rampal, Aishwarya Rajesh, Nishikant Kamat, Usha Naik, Anand Ingale, Rajesh Shringarpure, Purnanand Wandekar, Anupriya Goenka, Shruti Bapna, Shrikant Yadav, Deepak Damle, Raj Arjun, Vijay Sanap, Abhimanue Arun
DIRECTOR: Ashim Ahluwalia
Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely was certainly hard to decipher but it’s tech details were impeccable, similarly Daddy his sophomore effort is slightly more accessible but it still fails to present an entirely coherent and involving story. The film follows the ‘B.R.A. Gang’ acronym for – Babu Reshim (Anand Ingale), Rama Naik (Rajesh Shringarpore) and Arun Gawli (Arjun Rampal) as they set foot into the underworld and fight their way for a share of the mill land real estate pie.
Politics, internecine gang rivalry, turf wars, ricocheting murders, cops and criminals shadow play, one upmanship and shoot-outs are part of the dark and mouldy art deco assemblage trying to look back into the not too distant past in order to come up with something pleasant to say about the Dongri/Dagdi Chawl ka Raja, Don turned politician. The script fails to make things interesting. Ashim Ahluwalia’s direction is far more concerned with period mechanics rather than enlivening the narration with elements about a life that can ensnare an audience. While most of the casting choices are bang on, Farhan Akhtar as a character resembling Dawood, feels fake.
You may admire the integrity of the lead performances, the impeccability of the period detailing and the astonishing lighting and camerawork but you will still feel hard-pressed to stay awake because the narration falls way too flat to make any discernible improvement in your enthusiasm.