Critics Rating: 2 Stars

Cast: Kangna Ranuat, Vir Das, Piyush Mishra, Zakir Hussain

Direction: Sai Kabir Shrivastav

Genre: Drama

Producer: Raju Chadha, Crouching Tiger Motion Pictures, Nitin Tej Ahuja, Rahul Mittra

Written: Sai Kabir Shrivastav

Duration:2 hours 12 minutes

It’s too soon to ask Bandit Queen to move over. Revolver Rani’s Kangana Ranaut tries, really tries, to make it work in a film which turns gender conventions on their head. At least for the first half. But this review gets ahead of itself.

It begins in the beginning with two warring factions of Udaybhan Singh (Zakir Hussain) and Alka Singh (Kangana Ranaut) besting each other in the election period. Of course, there is less political chicanery and more elaborate shootouts from machine guns that never run low on ammo. You feel sorry for neither character, both drunk on power and using strong arm tactics like waving guns around as a show of strength. Udaybhan may be dressed as your standard, slimy politican, but Alka is more flamboyant, looking like a sober Madam X. She also has a kinky side when it comes to choices in brassieres.

There is the hapless wannabe actor, Rohan Kapoor (Vir Das), whom Alka takes a shine too, but there is little sympathy for him, considering his extracurricular shenanigans. He is the unlucky leverage between the two groups, tormented in the Chambal ravines, which fuels a gang war that was already like navigating a mine field.

The film tries to convince you that Alka is a good egg. She took up arms because of a traumatic incident in her childhood and had her uncle Balli (Piyush Mishra) raise her ever since. Alka is not supposed to be attractive, though it’s Kangana Ranaut playing her with complexions varying from dark to brick red, so you don’t buy that. The stigma of being barren weighs heavily on her too.

But despite the back-story, however insubstantial, Alka comes across as gun-toting, over-possessive and terrifyingly unreasonable. Everything she says comes punctuated with a shot she fires upwards. You expect a bird to drop to the ground. Judging by the number of times she does this in the movie, the skies are bound to be devoid of avian presence.

 

There isn’t much to the film. One character makes a speech, gets shot at by the other character’s gang. Vice versa. There is a fun track involving Rohan Kapoor’s “wedding” that draws laughs, but after a promising first half, the film takes a serious turn in the later reels. In the spirit of true gangsterism, the final scene involves a mega showdown of blazing guns with a song that strangely reminds of Lux Aeterna (from the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack). Some bits take you back to Kill Bill when The Bride would go into kill mode with a recurring leit motif that played ominously. The same device seems to be employed here.

Music is the high point in the film. The title track, which plays during excellent opening titles (Waltz with Bashir meets Sin City in a way), is very catchy, as is ‘Chal Lade Re Bhaiya’.

But there is still an overemphasis on shooting at inanimate objects and kicking things over, as recurring humour gags, which get old. Everybody seems to be so trigger-happy. And guns seem conveniently available, whether needed or not, around shelves. It may have been a satirical stab at lawless India, but it gets repetitive. Revolver Rani adds nothing to the gangster genre, already graced by Vishal Bhardwaj and Anurag Kashyap.

Kangana Ranaut, riding high from the success of the marvelous Queen, gets to play a Rani again in this film. She is in her element, wracked by hysteria and insecurity, which makes you wonder how Alka survived in the badlands as a leader for so long. Vir Das is good, despite having darker shades of grey in his character. Piyush Mishra seemed to wander out of the sets of Gangs of Wasseypur right into this film, doing the best he can in a limited role. Everybody else is just angry and firing shots in the air. No, really.

Revolver Rani falls prey to the ‘what could have been’ syndrome that plagues many a film with promising first halves. It is not a must watch for this weekend, but may not necessarily let you down if you go with zero expectations.