Cast: Harshvardhan Kapoor, Priyanshu Painyuli, Ashish Verma, NishikantKamat, Shreiyah Sabharwal, Pratap Phad Directed by: VikramadityaMotwane Written By: VikramadityaMotwane, Anurag Kashyap, Abhay Koranne Synopsis: The movie starts with three humanly characters of Rajat, Siku, and Bhavesh bonding over the 2011 Lokpal Agitation in Mumbai. The Anti-Corruption agitation was often the first tryst of the youth of this country with the concept of Mass Movements and Corruption, per se, so is for them, who are intrigued by the same, actively registering arrests and enjoying the protests to the brisk. Inspired by the same, they start a YouTube Channel called Insaaf TV, with Siku and Bhavesh being the local paper masked vigilantes resolving smaller issues in and around their society, the likes of Waste Disposal, Illegal Tree Smuggling and awakening sleeping guards of the society. Meanwhile Rajat is the typical nerd, who is writing a graphic comic about the first superhero of Mumbai, his narration of the character later inspires the movie. With time, as the Lokapal Protest dies down, so does their spirit to continue their channel and the activities associated, as is generally the case with the Indian Populace and their short memory of events. Gradually, Siku gets busy with his girlfriend and the desk job that he lands, while Bhavesh starts falling into depression due to the sad state of affairs that the country finds itself in, and the no-fuck attitude of the people towards their common problems and the falling viewership of their channel. An online request for help on their mail id: from an elderly couple, over the shortage of water in their locality leads Bhavesh to investigate and reveal a covert scam regarding the water supply mafia in the city, who have been stealing the water meant for the people (through the Municipal lines) and selling it back to them. As the video surfaces online, and is leaked to news channels, the mafia, on the toes, starts looking into the identity of the masked man of Insaaf TV. Meanwhile, Siku having landed a job in the US tries his best to process his Passport Verification through the police, which he is unable to do owing to the corrupt officials at the Station. At last he decided to, metaphorically and literally give in, and bribes them to get it processed which they happily do. Knowing this, Bhavesh gets enraged and curses Siku for having joined the system they have been fighting together. Both of them have a fight, and a subsequent fallout when Bhavesh punches Siku, and delivers a monologue: on the corrupt system, and involving everyone, from the people, bureaucrats and politicians as the parasite eating the nation from inside, in the name of the façade we call a democracy. In a fit of rage, the monologue is uploaded to Insaaf TV by Siku, following which Bhavesh, his face revealed, is thrashed by a mob terming his as Anti National, and arrested by Police, on his release he is caught by the Water Mafia and killed. The police terms the same as an accident, and hands over the body to Siku and Rajat, to perform last rites. Both of them resent the death of their best friend, with Siku, feeling apologetic and guilty, for having uploaded the video in rage. The rest of the story follows the transformation of a desk job employee into the first superhero of Mumbai, with a tinge of Bhavesh’s monologue in the very first scenes, of how, superheroes are not born but made, they don’t stop, they don’t watch from the sidelines for whatever unjust is happening, they come forward and awaken people from their utopia and blind sightedness, in a world full of lies they’ll tell the truth, for it is that they know, howsoever strong may the evil be, the benevolent shouldn’t lose sight, wherever there is corruption and crime, the 10,000 Watt bulb required to lighten up that world is called a hero. Going any forward would be a sin of delivering major spoilers, which I don’t intend to commit. Review: For a long period, the Indian Audience has been subjected to an extravagant platter of Hollywood Superheroes, the ones with an extraordinary story of resilience, character development, and struggle. More often than not, these stories of the western heroes are out of the world, wherein a hero having suffered an injury, or simply because of an accident, finds himself in the midst of a catastrophic global apocalypse, and the villains are, to put it mildly more bizarre in their construct then the hero themselves (Not Joker though!). All this, making the Indian Audience addicted to a particular form of addictive heroes, any diversion from which is not met with good response. Not that Indian Attempts at Superhero Development have helped anyhow (read Krisshh, or is it Krish, whatever). So, when I came across this particular movie released in 2018, it intrigued me, partially due to the wacky name and the poster it had adopted. The movie was Bhavesh Joshi: Superhero, and it was good (that’s an understatement). The names like Anurag Kashyap and VikramadityaMotwane did help, but the movie on its own deserved accolades which it did not receive, primarily because of the reasons already specified. The movie performed horribly at the box office, and understandably so, because the Indian audience have been fed the supernatural hero story so much so that, they have lost the sense of reality, a hero fighting for the common man’s problem isn’t worth watching, until (s)he is averting a global Armageddon, the struggle won’t be real. But if you do decide to watch the movie, watch it for the character development, the humanly relatable characters, the accuracy of physics and all the other physical sciences, the great chase sequences, the hero is not some super territorial power and can surely feel all the pain and human emotions, watch it for a bit of strength that we might require in the circumstances that the country is proceeding towards where ‘national’ and ‘anti national’ are slurs anyone can be subjected towards, for no fault of theirs whatsoever. P.S.: Watch it for the soothing composure of Amit Trivedi, and do listen Qasam Kha Li by Papon and Tafreeh, addictive totally.

Tathagat Sharma