REVIEW: Ghai's Black and White

At the onset, a very daunting role these days is to review a film. At a recent award function, Shah Rukh and Saif Ali Khan made their displeasure about critics quite obvious and they also used quite a few nasty nouns and adjectives to describe these poor pen pushers. And when the film has been made by a veteran producer, director, writer and actor like Subash Ghai the task becomes even more uphill.

But coming to Black and White. The last time Subash Ghai made a film was three years ago. The film was Kisna and it turned out to be a box-office dud. Most people predicted Ghai would retire but the showman was not in any mood to hang up his boots. He has returned with a film far different from what he has ever attempted in the last two decades of filmmaking. Who would ever have predicted three years ago that Ghai would direct a film like Black and White?

The story begins in Afghanistan and deals with the theme of religious indoctrination that takes place, beginning with the little kids. So we have Junaid who grows up with a hatred for all other religions. He also tends to be a little fanatical about his own religious inclinations.

He is then sent to India as a suicide bomber. And a lot of money, time and effort has been spent in order to create a valid identity for him. Junaid has been rechristened Numair Kazi, (Anurag Sinha) a person who lost his parents in the Gujarat riots. This makes sense, as there is often no way to prove who are the survivors in a riot and how many people perished.

But unlike Aamir in Fanaa, Numair is not a smooth operator. Instead of trying to blend in, he sticks out like a sore thumb and goes around killing people at the slightest provocation. This is where the screenplay begins to fail and continues to do so till the very end.

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