Available – Netflix
Time – 108 Mins
Age – 18
Genre – Neo-western crime thriller
Recommendation – One-time watch
Saw movie ‘Thar’ today. In a nutshell it’s a one-time watch, mostly for Anil Kapoor. He is still good.
It is set in 1980s in Munabao, a village in the Barmer dist. of Rajasthan. With the swag we associate with Anil Kapoor it is so easy to think that he would have loved to be part of an actual wild-west movie. And since that hasn’t happened ‘Thar’ was the next best thing.
It starts off well. A murder here and a torture there. Anil Kapoor as inspector Surekha Singh running both the crime scenes ably supported by Satish Kaushik. You are intrigued and hooked and looking forward to something interesting. 20-30 mins into the movie you are awed by the location. It is stark and arid and barren and just makes you wonder about how hot it must be. The background score for the first half is wonderful. Except a part where the wild-west sneaks in to drown out the suspenseful music. So far so good.
But soon enough, the modus-operandi at both the incidents have Surekha Singh believing that the incidents are not related. And as a viewer you agree. One is a drug case, opium being brought from across the border and the other still needs to be categorised. So that settles one part of the mystery. But then another starts, because as a viewer you wonder what was the point of other when the story was about one. Perhaps the answer is that otherwise you would have guessed the plot in the first 30 mins only.
By then you have learnt to ignore the murder case and focus on the torture case. Though I have to warn you not to watch them while you are eating. And to make matters worse Harshvardhan as Siddharth who is an antiques dealer, does not help. I haven’t seen any of his movies but by God, I hope he is better in them than he was in this movie. Even if the role demanded him to be grim and dark, he could have had a few expressions on his face. And to be pitted against his father who is damn good, the contrast was rather stark.
In the end, we all know that revenge boils down to love. And hence the revelation doesn’t come as a surprise. Really, it could have been a wonderful movie, it started off so promisingly. But in the end, it turns out to be one more of those ‘could have been better’.
The one thing I definitely didn’t like is the amount of gore and violence shown. Three men were tortured and – spoiler coming up – a woman. Watching the scenes of violence and imaging the rest was pretty unpleasant. The act was horrible and left my gut churning, even though I forwarded a lot of it.
So, if you have the time, watch it. For Anil, for the location, for the cinematography, for the background score but without a lot of expectations.
Looking for something to watch, check out the reviews of Sherni and Chehre to decide for yourself.
