A yellow Hummer speeding down the road with five youths and an Audi speeds past them almost in a 'catch me if you can" style.Then begins the race.One of the guys in hummer making a video of the race on his mobile to capture the moment of winning,Others cheering him,after sometime Audi quits the race accepting its defeat,turns left on a roundabout.The guy driving Hummer, starts circling the roundabout with a triumphant joy,others cheering him again.Then suddenly they stop to a screeching halt ,everyone tumbles over.They get down to see something which gives them the horror of their lives and sets the plot for the rest of the film.
'Shaitan' looks straight into the face of the reluctant,not-so-eager Indian viewer and shakes him out of the slumber by introducing him to his own dark reality.People get used to complacency and are satisfied that what they are being served is what they only deserve, but when a filmmaker like Anurag Kashyap takes up the cause,he makes sure we get nothing but the best.
The film is about a bunch of kids(as they are supposed to be attending schools) who are rich and carry a devil-may-care attitude.A 'rebel without a clue', 'KC' ,who has a rich god-fearing dad,doesn't mind stealing his mom's jewellery when he and his friends are in trouble and need money.Amy an NRI joins the 'gang' later ,has a destructive mentality because she lost her mother at an early age and holds everyone in her family responsible for that.Tanya,a forced model who does a saree ad because her sister wants her to.Dash is the guy we know least about and 'Zubin' played by neil bhoopalam an ex channel 'v' video jockey a gadget geek who sheepishly smiles when he gets caught by his mom giving himself a hand-job and finally Rajeev Khandelwal as Inspector Mathur who impresses again as 'tough as nail' cop who would rather kick an auto-driver than arguing when he refuses to go to a certain place .
First time director Bejoy seems to have done his homework well and impresses with innovative camera techniques . There's a shot through a beer bottle during a song and the introduction of Insepector Mathur which is done in POV camera style.Producer Anurag kashyap is a prolific director himself and some of the scenes in the film seem like they've been lifted straight from his previous films like there's a scene in the film where a 'good cop' (Rajeev Khandelwal) chases a 'bad cop' through the narrow by-lanes of Bombay slums a la the 'great chase' sequence in his own movie 'Black Friday'.Producer further indulges himself by recreating another scene from his own film 'Paanch' which got shelved after a controversial face-off with the censor-board because of its violent and drug related scenes and still seem like too much for our iron-clad society even after more than 10 years of its making.
'Shaitan' scores some extra points when it shows some real gory and bloody scenes and creates a feeling of horror in the viewer who by so far was enjoying good music and trying to relive his own college days by watching the gang's juvenile antics.This film does, what 'Dil chahta hai' and 'Rang de basanti' did for the decade just went by,which is, showing another facade of the youth which can be all fun-loving at times but has the potential for being the most turbulent when its expected to be at its best.
I feel more films like 'Shaitan' should come out as these films are not made to send a message across but to make one feel that anyone can have an alternative side which he's not aware of and can wreck a havoc if not timely tamed.
