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Badla Movie Review: Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu flirt with truth in this thriller {3.5/5}
Badla movie review: Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee get the best of dialogues and two make sure to elevate it with their strong performance and terrific screen presence.
Badla Movie: Badla
Badla Movie Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Amrita Singh
Badla Movie Director: Sujoy Ghosh
Badla Movie Ratings: 3.5/5
"Concentrate on the details", reiterates Amitabh Bachchan aka lawyer Badal Gupta in the Sujoy Ghosh thriller Badla umpteen times. And that's exactly what is needed to be done to figure out the plot of Badla, which changes pace after every 15 minutes. The movie, which is an official adaptation of the 2017 Spanish film The Invisible Guest, sells a web of lies in the first half, while the second half is a fast-paced recap of the murder. But only this time, the unraveling is much more fun, leaving each one of us waiting with bated breath to figure who is playing whom!
Badla is essentially a story of the businesswoman named Naina Sethi played by Taapsee, who is being prosecuted for an alleged murder of her lover Arjun, whose murder is again connected to another murder of a teenager whose mother Rani Kaur played by Amrita Singh is on the hunt for justice. Now, are these two murders interlinked? If yes, how? If no, is Naina really guilty or so as she pleads? Badal Gupta, played by Big B, is the ONLY ray of hope for Naina with a record of winning all the cases in his career. In the very beginning, Badal quips that he is Dhritarashtra, the blind king, a metaphor to the justice system. He through smart wordplay and interrogation tactics tries very hard to break Naina, but she is not someone who can be played easily. "I am Businesswoman for a reason," she exclaims during one of the scenes.
What keeps the storytelling engaging is this tit for tat game between the accused and the lawyer which keeps up with the tempo of the screenplay. The layered humour crack us up in between, but before we dwell too much into laughter, Sujoy doesn't let us dwindle from the main plot. The screenplay is tight and like expected the climax will leave you shocked. But, if you have already watched the original Spanish movie, the climax is unlikely to shock you as Sujoy has not played around much with it, which we wish he had. This is perhaps one of the lesser drawbacks to the movie. The music is kept intense to match the intensity of the murder mystery and thank god that none of the characters broke into a dance sequence.
Now, finally, let us admit that it is a sheer joy to watch Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu sit across the table playing with each other the ultimate game of truth and deceit. Sujoy Ghosh has adapted the screenplay very beautifully adding a little magic of his own. The dialogues are kept contemporary, dropping several hints for those who were equally invested to decode the murder mystery. "A lie told for a bigger cause, is not a lie," preached Mahabharata and it is no coincidence that Sujoy decided to plug in several references to the mythological epic.
Amrita Singh as Rani Kaur is wonderful. Her strength and vulnerability as a mother come across very well. Big B and Taapsee get the best of dialogues and two make sure to elevate it with their strong performance and terrific screen presence. Taapsee portrays vulnerability, guilt, power and class impeccably, not leaving an ounce of loophole there, even though we wished Naina was as good with observing details as she was with her words. The flamboyance with which Big B makes an entry is a sign of his undying energy and legacy with his baritone voice adding a mystery to his character. He looks like a man with motive but what? Go find out yourself by watching Badla!
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