Halla Bol review

Rajkumar Santoshi’s, 'Halla Bol', is a fairly riveting film with a strong social undertone. It has been inspired by the Jessica Lall murder case and does justice to the issue. Although the format and narration reminds one of Santoshi’s earlier films, “Damini” and “ Lajja”, which too incidentally were socially relevant films.

The story / screenplay (Rajkumar Santoshi) is about an actor, Ashfaque Khan, who has risen from the ranks to achieve super stardom. Ashfaque is an honest and idealistic person who is single minded in his pursuit to become an actor and goes through a lot of struggle to achieve a foothold in his career. Ashfaque changes his name to Sameer the moment he tastes success and with the change in name also goes through a change in ideals and principles. He becomes worldly-wise and street smart and shuns everything from his past, including his wife (Vidya Balan), his parents (Anjan Srivastav & Sulbha Arya) and most importantly his mentor, Sidhu (Pankaj Kapoor).  He becomes so obsessed with himself that, nothing seems to matter to him, not even a murder of an innocent girl at a friend’s party.  He distances himself from the incident but somewhere, within him something starts to stir and slowly his conscience starts to haunt him for his inability to raise his voice against injustice. He decides to stand up against the people responsible even though they are powerful and eventually helps in bringing them to justice.

The film also reminds one of, 'Rang de Basanti' at a few places since both deal with generating public opinion through the media for a social cause. However, Rajkumar Santoshi’s narration has a distinct late 80’s and early 90’s style to it. His choice of backdrops and locales as well as actors apart from the lead protagonists is passÈ. The whole film comes across as a single man’s crusade against injustice and makes him look either helpless or fearless as when necessary in the screenplay. In spite of all this, 'Halla Bol' does have some real soul-stirring moments, be it Pankaj Kapoor talking about his encounter with truth and chastising society for their silence including the media or then Ajay Devgan’s pissing on Gaikwad’s (Darshan Jariwla) Persian carpet or Vidya Balan’s clarification on her marital status to the media. All these are definite claptrap sequences and are very effective in whipping up the desired emotions in the audience.   

Ajay Devgan as Ashfaque/ Sameer Khan has done full justice to the character; he plays the self-obsessed super star with ease and aplomb and later goes through an effective sea change in portraying the crusader of justice. Vidya Balan as the ever-supportive wife is alright. Darshan Jariwala as the wily politician Gaikwad is very good. Anjan Srivastav and Sulbha Arya as Ashfaque’s parents are convincing. However, the show-stealer is Pankaj Kapoor who plays the dacoit turned street play actor/ director Sidhu. He is the soul of the film and is authentic in every moment, a truly memorable performance. Nitin Desai’s production design is disappointing he has chosen an unimpressive house as a superstar’s bungalow. Sukhwinder Singh’s music is pretty effective especially the Gurbani.  V.Natarajan (Cinematography) has done a competent job the crowd sequences have been well shot. Abbas Ali Moghul’s action is effective. Steven Bernard (Editing) has done well to keep the film pacy; the street play sequence deserves a special mention for its very crisp cuts. Rajkumar Santoshi has made a very soul-stirring film and deserves applause, though his style of narration is a little dated. On the whole, 'Halla Bol', is a socially relevant and thought provoking film, which should find favor with the audiences. 

Rohit Tanejaa is a film director.