Directed by the renowned theater veteran Feroz Abbas Khan as his second film post GANDHI, MY FATHER (2007), this is indeed a courageous attempt by the makers, since there When they released its first teaser, everybody got excited riding on the QUEEN wave assuming that here comes another gem from the talented yet under-rated actress Kangna Ranaut. But the impact reduced a lot just after a few days, with the film's complete theatrical trailer coming in having numerous shot being blindly fired by every character on the screen just like some uncontrollable kids. So the doubts were clearly there watching the 2-3 minute glimpses and they all came true as I watched REVLOVER RANI this Friday with a mixed kind of excitement.
Directed by Sai Kabir with an inspired vision reminding you of explosive films by Tigmashu Dhulia, Anurag Kashyap and to some extent RGV too, the film no doubt walks on some ground breaking lines initially. But only after the first 30 minutes, it simply becomes anybody's guess that this is yet another example of those bad films with excellent promotional stuff fooling the audience. Strangely progressing with many weird insertions REVOLVER RANI even becomes intolerable post intermission and that is the reason I witnessed a few youngsters moving out of the theater too shouting out loudly cursing the makers.
In short, nothing really works in this film having an extremely potent plot with a huge potential. The direction portrays it all in a silly kind of lazy mode with an equally less energetic background score having quite weak arrangements and the performances too fail to pick it up ever in the entire duration. Here I would not like to blame the writer completely as he does come up with few interesting sequences at regular intervals. But it's the execution of the twists which fails to impress the viewer throughout, turning them to something bizarre too at times. Cinematography & productions values constantly give you the feeling of watching something above the routine. But the poor to mediocre songs act as a few more nails in the ready coffin visibly. The director tries his best to convert everything beautiful into ugly following an intentional mode and such is his confidence in this unusual product that he even goes on to add another ugly scene in the end pointing towards a sequel too.
Honestly REVOLVER RANI remains a perfect example of the truth that actually a film is all there in the mind of a director only and the actors are just performing their individual scenes as given to them on the sets. Because here you can clearly see every single actor in the film performing as if he is acting in a cult movie, to the best of his or her ability, without having any idea of what it's going to be as a final product in front of the real audience sitting in the theater. Kangna tries to behave as cruelly (or kinky) as possible with her given lines and Vir Das works hard to provide the lighter moments required through his great comic timing. Plus we also have Piyush Mishra, Zakir Hussain, Kumud Mishra, Pankaj Saraswat & Zeishan Quadri too giving their sincere performances offering some timely pleasure.
Yet there is no QUEEN here in REVOLVER RANI and the film is a big mess despite having such talented names in the cast.
