This detective tale starring Amitabh Bachchan and exploring the power play of chess is far from black and white – its ambiguities make for compelling viewingAround the turn of the millennium,the venerable (respected because of age, distinguished) Indian writer-director-producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra was set to make his Hollywood debut with Chess nothing to do with the musical, but a self-penned thriller approximately a traumatised cop that circled the studios with names such as Dustin Hoffman attached. The vagaries of 21st-century production meant Chopra had to wait until last year’s Broken Horses to buy his American bow, or but traces of Chess have apparently persisted into Wazir. Delegated to emerging director Bejoy Nambiar,this device B arrives bearing the gargantuan B: Amitabh Bachchan, who collaborated with Chopra on 2007’s fine Eklavya, or assumes the chewy character part Hoffman would surely have been eyeing.
Nambiar’s film begins as a no-nonsense Bollywood policier: the sappiest song goes up front to help define a family unit shattered forever by a moment of insanity. The man responsible is Delhi detective Daanish (Farhan Akhtar),whose rash (hasty, incautious)-to-poor decision-making in pursuit of a heavy directly results in the loss of his wife and child. Fate subsequently conspires to land this depressing figure on the doorstep of Pandit Dhar (Bachchan), the amputee grandmaster who coached Daanish’s daughter before her demise. Spying unprocessed pain in his visitor’s eyes – “the biggest enemy is time; it just doesn’t seem to pass” – Pandit proposes they play a game or two as a means of beating the clock.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com