When Senior Inspector Shivani Shivaji Roy, Unit Three Crime Branch, walks into the scene, you can pretty much predict that the bad boys are going to have their share of thrashings. Yes, she’s the no-nonsense modern day Durga, who knows how to set all the ”churans”, her interpretation of the”C” word; on track. In the very first scene of Mardaani, you can see her as an epitome of boldness and fearlessness and is a tad straight-forward. Why? Well, just because she can.
She has a twelve year old niece and a husband who apparently is a doctor and runs a clinic in Mumbai. In her quest of fighting against atrocities, she comes across Pyaari, a poor bubbly orphan. Pyaari turns out to be one of the major characters of the movie as all the action and drama follows her abduction by a group of elite and overly-calculative sex traffickers. Trying to fit the puzzles into the bamboozle all by herself, Shivani Roy puts the traffickers on surveillance who return the favour to her. The over-confident boss of traffickers engages in telephonic conversations with her and gets a pen name from her too- “Under 19 team ka 12th man”.
She manages to track down an auto dealer who has dirtied his hands with the “Under 19 team” player and interrogates him in the best possible way- feeding him with ‘Jalebies’. Apparently, lots of jalebies and no water is a masterstroke of interrogation! Meanwhile, her husband is accused of molesting a patient and is traumatized after his clinic was turned into rubble and his face was turned into coal.
She then tracks the trafficker down (who actually is called Vakeel, no one knows his real name!), comes to Delhi, uses a couple of Nigerians to reach him and voila!, there he is. It actually doesn’t end there. There’s an insensitive lady, an over-obsessed drug lord and an MLA or MP (how can we keep politics out of this?) to play their parts too. Yes, it gets better with time!
Lots of drama and action later, the actual lord is being slapped and kicked and punched by Shivani first and then all the abducted girls (with Durga music in the background). In a nutshell, the movie has a great theme and typical hindi movie like storyline. It would’ve been great though if there weren’t some slightly unnatural scenes, but hey, this is a bollywood movie we’re talking about! Though kudos to YRF to emphasize on Women Power. In Senior Inspector Shivani’s words, “Sab kucch ho jaane ke baad haath mein candle lena” won’t help…your ‘Mardaani’ will!
Apart from suspense, thrill, action and amazing performance by Rani Mukherjee, the movie has also given out a ‘Mardaani Anthem’ with powerful lyrics that go like – “Jis dunia mein maa-behnein rishte nahi, gaali hai, uss dunia se maryada ke mai rishte saare todungi, jaan ko chahe challi kardo, aan ko na choone dungi” Strongly, recommended to be listened to!
Arushi Pathak
Rating: 3/5
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