When I launched BookMyShow app yest. morning, I was shocked to find almost all 3D and 3D Max shows of Captain America are houseful till Sunday night. On the other hand, almost all the shows of a little known movie called Traffic was empty. I bought the tickets of Traffic for late night show.
As I was entering the almost empty theater at Mall of India, an uncle and his wife were also entering, and the uncle was saying, "The whole theater is empty.. is it a bad movie?"
When the movie finished, I asked him, how was the movie.. He said, "Delhi walo ko to bas America ke hero hi ache lagte hain. Asli hero to Manoj Bajpayee nikla!" Clearly his eyes were moist, and he was avoiding direct eye-contact.
Traffic should have been named 'An Indian Life', because its much more than a story of how Bombay traffic police successfully transports a heart from Mumbai to Pune within 2.5 hours, how they controllled the traffic, managed the crowd, and introduced myriad elements of an Indian life within those 120 minutes of movie.. The movie is a commentary on human emotions, of failing, and then refusing to give up, about losing someone, but having the guts to let it go.. Its about bravery, its about failure, its about love and life.
I had always been huge fan of Malayalam movies, and this remake of a Malayalam movie is another example of how advanced, emotionally vulnerable and deep stories they produce. The movie is like a thriller mind-game.. With solid performance from actors like Manoj Bajpayee,Jimmy Shergill, Prosenjit Chatterjee (Bengali movie's superstar), Parambrata Chatterjee (another Bengali actor, from Kahani), Sachin Khedekar, Divya Dutta, Kitu Gidwani and more. Piyush Mishra's dialogues are just the icing on the cake.
After you celebrate American heros and the massive production of a super-hero movie.. do watch this humble offering from late Rajesh Pillai, who was a brilliant director, and could have done so much for the cinema.
