Moochh Ado ABout Nothing (Film Reviw: Mangal Pandey)

Frankly speaking, if this is the story of our first battle of Independence, we are better off without getting into the details. But frankly speaking, we know this is not. What it is, is the story of Ketan Mehta’s personal battle against his ‘flop’ past by employing the ‘hit’ Amir Khan in the role of a little-known Sepoy of the mutiny of 1857. But past catches up with Ketan once again, and what was expected to be the most ‘pride-filling’ experience of the year turns out to be an aimless tale full of ‘Mirch Masala’.
But before we start, let’s get one thing clear. The film fails, not because of the ‘burden of expectations’ (as many critics would like you to believe) but solely because of it’s horrible script and misdirection. Had one expected nothing great from this team, the disappointment would still have been the same.
The film opens with Mangal Pandey (Amir Khan, brilliant and wasted) being taken to the gallows and his British Officer friend William Gordon (Toby Stephens) feeling the pain on his behalf. As the news comes in that no hangman is ready to do the job, the hanging is postponed till William Gordon narrates the whole of the story in flashback. And the perversion starts.
The next hour and a half are spent in ‘developing’ the relation between Mangal and William, as an assorted set of characters (and their breasts!) heave for attention. Mangal’s concern for the poor Indian waiter, whom the wily British officer treats like a ‘kaala kutta’ seems misplaced. Mangal’s subsequent questioning to William about the concept of East India Company Raaj is juvenile at best. The street-selling of ‘Nautch girl’ Heera (Rani Mukherjee, dressed like Mallika Sherawat for the most part), her buying by some kothe-waali Baai (Kirron Kher, vulgar, gross, loud, horrible), the intended Sati burning of Jwala (Amisha Patel, thankfully silent), the love and dejection of William Gordon, and the massacre of a whole village for refusing to grow opium (a gross exaggeration of historical facts) are some of the events that jostle for space while the first rumors of ‘animal-fat cartridges’ hit the Indian village (which village, which state, ask Ketan Mehta!) where Mangal is staying.
The second half is devoted to how Mangal and some other equally disgusted soldiers plan a mutiny and how an Indian maid to a British lady spoils the latter’s orgasm only to reveal the Indian plans. So, in the end, it’s only Mangal versus the Raaj as the poor man fires a few bullets, takes a few blows, and is hospitalized before being tried and hanged in front of a huge audience. (And you can actually spot some smiling faces in the crowd running like India has just won another Cricket World Cup.)
But that’s not all. A wayward storyline is just one flaw, the other, and even bigger, is the characterization. We never come to know ‘who is Mangal Pandey’, why was he more sensitive towards the events which were there for everybody to see, and why oh why, did he shoot himself. William Gordon, on the other hand, comes across as the principal character with a better flushed out back-story and a clear stand on most of the issues. But then, the film was titled ‘Mangal Pandey’ and not ‘William Gordon’. The failure of script could be gauged from the fact that not even once, you feel for the cause of Mangal (or Indians in general), and the only tears rolling out of your eyes will be of the frustration of seeing a patriotic film full of dipping necklines, ham acts and clichéd dialogues. And that much-touted ‘Period’ feel is just a sham, as the sets look just like, well, sets.
Farukh Dhondy, who had earlier written Kisna, has proved that you just need the will power to write a bad script, and he seems to have a lot of it. A.R. Rehman’s music is rocking but who needed the songs? Everything else, including Ketan Mehta’s direction reminds one of the B-Grade cinema Subhash Ghai has mastered over the years.
Performance wise, Amir and Toby Stephens are exceptional and their revelry in some of the scenes is the best part of the film. But in the lack of better lines and character, Amir too looks a lean figure as opposed to a strong-willed poster-boy of 1857. Toby as William Gordon is the only bright light in this badly-researched epic, with a proper justification of all his actions. Rani is a complete waste and Amisha manages to irritate even in that blink-and-miss role. Others, including a huge cast of British actors hams its way through the film and almost all the Indian villagers seem to have an Awadhi-accent although film is supposed to set in Barrackpore in Bengal.
In the end, you come out with a red-face because this could have been the story (if you can call it one) of any confused Sepoy set in a time and society when cleavage was a part of our culture and British officers were a greedy bunch of caricatures. But the story of Mangal Pandey, the mutineer of the folklore, this is not.