How much of JohnDay you would like depends on the quantum of on screen blood and gore you can assimilate.Produced by Anjum Rizvi(A Wednesday) and directed by Ahisor Solomon, this thriller examines the transformation of a saint to a beast and the thin blurred line which divides their psyche in the cold brutal world with no comic relief.
JohnDay(played by Naseeruddin Shah),a bank manager by profession, and a doting father loses his daughter in a brush fire and years later serendipitously discovers the fire was not the result of an accident but rather subterfuge. John swears revenge and finds himself embroiled in a web of intrigues involving corrupt bureaucrats, Mafiosos and other criminal elements which also includes the nihilistic cop with a terrible past,Gautam(Randeep Hooda).
Solomon unfurls the suspense quite lazily.The motivations of the characters are never revealed,is deeply layered and this well-crafted drama gets busy and stays busy with a coolly cerebral approach which avoids extremes of emotion,romance, and other visceral appetizers though there is blood letting aplenty.In one scene we see the almost-psychopath cop,Gautam tearing off the tongue of a criminal and devouring in the sadistic pleasure when blood squirts out of his mouth.In another one,John in a move of self-protection, bites and rips apart the neck of one of the goons who is recklessly after his life. Now this is definitely not for the faint-hearted !
John Day assembles the impeccable Naseeruddin Shah and the intriguing Randeep Hooda in the cat-and-mouse chase and both are equally sincere in their performances. A rather-talented Shernaz Patel who plays Shah's wife ,disappointingly, spends almost all her reel hours as a comatose while Vipul Sharma,playing Hooda's apprentice, gets his act right. Makrand Deshpande and Bharat Dhabolkar make pleasing cameos in this inky kingdom of betrayal,power-play and greed.
An edgy plot of the doomed and the damned,I would recommend JohnDay for those who fathom violence and profanity with the same cynical alert that Hooda's character throws at his prey , while stuffing biriyani till the latter suffocates in despair," Tu Dal-Chawal kha, Biriyani tere bas ki baat nahin hai"
