Madras Cafe

Director Shoojit Sircar moved into the spotlight after the success of Vicky Donor – a film that turned John Abraham into a producer. Madras Café has Shoojit Sircar as the director and John Abraham as the producer-narrator-protagonist.The movie is an “espionage thriller” according to the director. The setting is Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict that ends with the assassination of the India's “ex-Prime Minister”.  That is a cryptic clue.John Abraham is an agent who is sent on a mission to Sri Lanka to weaken Anna (a thinly disguised version of the LTTE leader Prabhakaran), the leader of the party that represents the ethnic Tamils.  Nargis Fakhri is a journalist who has been sent to cover the war. Nargis Fakhri's role is modeled on veteran journalist Anita Pratap who did one of the first in-depth interviews of Prabhakarn. Boy meets girl. And what must be a rare moment for Bollywood, the lead couple is not romantically involved. That one took you by surprise, right? That was probably the best twist of the movie. The depiction of RAW agents has been done realistically. None of them aspire to mimic James Bond. That is a relief.This was an attempt to spin a story set in the world of espionage and counter espionage. There are betrayals, killings and false leads to keep you guessing. The film shot largely in Kerala tries to recreate what it must have been like in the eighties and nineties in Sri Lanka. The shots of the ethnic conflict are vivid and disturbing. In a war there are no winners and the civilians are the greatest losers. That certainly comes through in the film. The suffering of the prosecuted is heartbreaking. Long after the movie is over the visuals keep coming back.http://youtu.be/hnkKI01I0AcIn this movie the main character is the conflict itself. Everyone else’s impact pales in comparison. John Abraham and Nargis Fakhri’s performance is average. I think the weak link in what is otherwise a taut, visually appealing film is the convoluted screenplay in the first twenty minutes of the film as the characters are introduced. The narrative is very fuzzy and the characters are not adequately developed. This is a story that is familiar to several people in the audience. That is why patchy storytelling does not come in the way of our enjoying the film. The location shifts between Delhi, Kochi, Bangkok and Jaffna at a brisk pace and that is a treat.John Abraham’s opening scene of waking up in cold sweat as he gets recurring nightmares of the war was a powerful way to open the story. Having him narrate the story as a voice-over that starts as a church confession took the fizz out of it. Nargis Fakhri as a war correspondent is authentic though the role is too small to be noticed. The movie has veteran journalist Dibang and several familiar faces in cameo appearances. Siddharth Basu, the quiz master of yester years could take up acting as his second career. It is ironic that his role as the head of RAW was perhaps one of the performances that is nuanced - though his role is not the mainstay of the story. Jayanta Das and Swaroopa Ghosh who played Yami Gautam’s father and spinster pishi in Vicky Donor also show up on screen briefly. It was an opportunity missed to not develop the character of John Abraham’s anxious spouse played by Rashi Khanna.I came back from the film wondering what the film was all about.  Was the idea was to make a film on how Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination could have been averted or was it about the futility of war or was it about the Sri Lankan civil war. Madras Café seems to have answered all of the above in a multiple choice question.Shoojit Sircar is clearly a director who is not afraid to experiment with a range of subjects. He is a film maker to take a bet on. Why is it called Madras Café? You have to watch the film for that.--------Read a review of Vicky Donor Join me on twitter @AbhijitBhaduri