Dial 100 | Not A Movie Review by Movie Insert | Manoj B, Neena G, Sakshi T | MOVIE INSERT

 

 How many reviews of this film are goingto start with a list of all the movies, where Manoj Bajpayee plays a cop,or an investigative officer of some kind? Shool, Traffic, Bhonsle, Taandav, Satyamev Jayate,Silence... Can You Hear It, Family Man, something called Jaago, Inteqam:The Perfect Game, Special 26….. And yet, no two roles are ever the same. Hey yall, my name is Sucharita, this is Film Companion,you're watching Not A Movie Review and right now I am not going to be reviewing Dial 100. We start off on a rainy Mumbai night, kyunki, Andheri raaton ki setting badhiyareheti hai, for a story like this. Cliché hai, lekin dekhtey hain what happens next.I'm here for it. Nikhil Sood is senior PI with Mumbai Police,working nights in the emergency control room. He gets a call one night, a woman oscillatingbetween suicidal and murderous, he tries to talk her off the ledge, only to find outhis own family is somehow entwined in this. Manoj Bajpayee possesses a mysterious ability to playpolice officers in every shade of police officer possible. Once again you see him be a parentand a man in a dangerous profession, personal life and work overlappingin uncomfortable ways, and once again he manages to create a whole newcharacter with writer-director Rensil D'Silva. Thanks to the leading actor’s completesync with his director, you buy into everything else around him,which might bother you more elsewhere. The perfectly clean Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. typepolice facility, neatly aligned desks, paper bins and sofa's straight out of a Pepperfry catalogue,the obvious “this is going to be a mystery-thriller” lighting and cinematography….it works, you go along with it. But when you begin to accurately predictevery single turn the story is about to take, the screenplay’s hold on your attention loosens and Dial 100unfortunately never quite evolves into anything more than, “one night of crime in a city”, it's toobreezy and simple to be very engaging. Neena Gupta plays a bereaved mother, whose deep trauma at having lost a son manifestsinto things you’ll see, the night this story plays out. A fine actor on any given day, here Neena Guptachoses to play Seema Pallav on a very strange note, an energy you could place smackin the middle of psychotic break and righteous rage against the machine. It’s not an unimpressive performance,a lot of which is in voice over, but I suspect not a whole lot of time wasspent finding the tonality of the character, or working on it too much, due to which the overallimpact of the conflict in the story is drastically reduced. There’s only that much one is ableto buy into the filmi-ness of it all, and I personally draw the line at the antagonistunironically, saying “ab tumhe koi nahi bacha sakta”. Which brings me to Nirenjan Iyengar’s dialogue,astute and obtuse all at once. Initially when Nikhil Sood receives the SOS call,it doesn’t rattle him, he’s going through the motions. He doesn’t ask for the caller’s name, he keepscalling her madam, he's not too perturbed, yeh uska roz ka kaam hai, dincharya hai,and his lines reflect that. He’s jokes with his colleagues aboutsuicides being easier to handle, than “kutte billi ka rescue”, its conversationalenough to pass off as dark humor, sure. Which is why its perplexing ki in one of themore high energy moments in the film, when two characters are face to face, there’s twolive guns involved, stakes are at an all time high, the dialogue inexplicably devolvesdown to the most basic imaginable. Much like the screenplay, starts off great,a fun kind of deliberate campy, loses its fun and deliberation along the way,and is just campy by the end of it. A cigarette lighter that wont light,a young son who wont listen, an oily vada paao he cant bring himself to eat, nothing is going well for Senior PINikhil Sood this particular night. Except the actor who plays him. The movie is streaming on Zee 5,khud dekh kar aap taiy karein. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Dial 100 is, 100 points to those who can name at least15 cop roles Manoj Bajpayee has played. There must be 15. Are there 15? Instagram pe aa ke bataao mujhko!