Cargo

Last week it was JL50 & now comes Cargo which is another step forward in the right direction. God bless the OTT platforms that came to the rescue of such innovative films. Cargo is unlike anything we have seen before & is the one of the most original films to come out of India. It has mythological/ philosophical undertones & is a pathbreaking cinema in the genre of science fiction.

Set in the outer space in 2027 the films deals with post death transition services (PDTS). The rakshasas have signed a peace treaty with the humans. Vikrant Massey plays a lonely demon named Prahastha who has the job to ensure smooth transitioning of dead humans into their next lives. He is shown to have spent many years as an astronaut. He finally gets an assistant in the form of Yuvishka (Shweta Tripathi) to realize soon that he was set to retire because his cargos had started repeating themselves. The movie talks about life & death. There are many deaths shown but all in a lighter vein.

Speaking of performances Vikrant Massey is excellent as usual effectively depicting the loneliness & frustration of his character. Shweta Tripathi is good as his assistant who starts loosing her healing powers. Nandu Madhav who plays their boss is effective. Konkana Sen Sharma has a nice cameo. Background score is strictly functional with a catchy tune that plays couple of times.

Arati Kadav makes an assuring debut & while she has to be applauded for bringing something so unique in this genre inspite of a tight budget, few characters/ locations & other limitations. The problem lies in the fact that the fim barely scratches the surface & lacks depth. It leaves you wanting for more & it also demands your patience because of its slow pace. Having said that the concept is so innovative that you cant help but congratulate the makers.

Cargo review :

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Fikar not. We finally have answer to the 'After life' theory - What happens to humans after they pass away??

Seems there is no after-life at all. No heaven or hell to worry about.

Once you die on planet earth, you just get transported to a spaceship hovering some 35,000 kms away; You are welcomed on board by two docile astronauts who cordially inform you that you are dead. Then after taking your finger prints (probably to delink your Aadhar card down here!!!), you are nicely escorted to a cell where they heal your injuries and body marks, then erase your memory and extract you back in to your next life. So very easy peasy, isnt it?!!

Cargo, the latest sci-fi film on Netflix, has an interesting concept and probably may have sounded great on paper but unfortunately, has translated in to a dull and amateurish endeavour which feels a drag even at just one hour fifty minutes of its run time.

Truly, there is nothing and absolutely nothing beyond its core concept. All you get to see for close to two hours are some random people dying in our world, arriving at the spaceship and going through the aforementioned punar janam process. This goes on and on and on...

The two astronauts, Vikrant Massey and Shweta Tripathi, both fantastic actors, just go through the motions with zero chemistry between them. The screenplay is to be blamed here!!

As for the spaceship and its interiors obviously inspired by 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968), it is disheartening to see that we are still (in 2020) unable to match the greatness that the legendary Stanley Kubrick could achieve in 1968. Sad!!

Regards, Sumeet Nadkarni.

The plot of this movie is a little different and might not be liked by everyone. So a rating of 5 suggests that. But the movie is actually good. It fantasies a bit of what happens after a person dies and under what different circumstances a life is lost. How a soul after dying reacts. People talking about experience of talking to dead people. So an out of the box concept. Acting done by Vikrant and Shweta is good. This is definitely a must watch to get a feel of a different genre of movies. A bit of emotions, truth and fantasy.

Movie without any logic and sense. A good plot wasted with some childish logics behind it. Waste of time

Got nothing from the movie. Seriously looking for something in this movie with the very talented star casts. But it's a disappointing and slow.