Apaharan Review

Its a Jungle out there. And no one other than Prakash Jha knows how to present the Jungle, its inhabitants and the events better on screen. After 'Gangajal', Prakash Jha comes up with yet another gripping tale of an organized crime in the cow belt, this time picking up the issue of 'Apaharan' i.e. kidnapping. No, he doesn't try to solve the issue but presents to audience the tale of what happens behind the scene of this organized crime. While both the print and satellite media merely flashes the headlines, the director has gone a few steps ahead to show the 'why' and the 'how' of it!

The film begins with the newspaper clippings and satellite channels breaking news about kidnapping in the state of Bihar that is happening on an almost daily basis. Amongst all this, there is Ajay Shastri [Ajay Devgan], a medical representative, who aspires to get into police department. In spite of two failed attempts, he hasn't lost hope and gets ample support from his love Megha [Bipasha Basu]. His father Professor Raghuvansh Shastri [Mohan Aghashe] is a Gandhian, a man of principles and aims at exposing the lawbreakers.

Meanwhile the government is being run through the nexus of Home Minister [Chetan Pandit] and Tabrez Alam [Nana Patekar], and in their scheme of things the people involved are politicians, police, criminals and bureaucrats. A political leader of the minority, Tabrez is ruthless and uses the name of religion to keep his flag high. Gaya Singh [Yashpal Sharma] is the prime member of his gang and operates from jail while Murali [Murali Sharma] is the middleman who 'arranges' for the kidnapping. There are a few honest folks like Anwar Khan [Mukesh Tiwari], a cop and Akash Ranjan [Anoop Soni], a journalist who represent that facet of society that still has some conscience left.

Ajay's dream of getting into police is just round the corner when a scandal breaks that results in him loosing the job. Meanwhile his father's life is in danger and he is left with no option than to join the world of crime. He gets his first kidnapping assignment that turns out to be a failed attempt and leads him to jail. He soon gets himself out and after killing Gaya Singh joins the gang of Tabrez Alam. From this point on the story takes a political turn as Ajay becomes more and more powerful and starts ruling the world of crime. But does crime always pay?

There have been number of movies made in the past that have told the story of mislead youth but what makes 'Apaharan' different is that rather than getting into sermonizing, it just fleshes out all the details on screen through a powerful script that doesn't try to dwell into black and white. While the first half of the movie goes into the minutest details of the kidnapping industry and how it functions, the second half becomes a political drama where nothing is predictable.

First one and a half hour of the movie is extremely powerful with things moving at rapid face and events unfolding at a pace that stun you and sometimes even bring a chuckle along. Even in the second half emergence of Ajay from a meek and frightened man to someone gradually rising to power has been well handled. There are number of memorable sequences in the film; especially the one where Gaya Singh is shown to be operating from jail with all the facilities and later Ajay entering the same jail that has been decorated to suit his taste. His entire body language takes the film to a different level altogether. As always, he comes up with yet another superlative performance.

In the second half, things do tend to become too complex for comfort and an average viewer who has come for entertainment may start feeling his brains to be taxed to a large extent as the entire political turmoil starts becoming a bit too much for him to comprehend. Entire drama about changing political fortunes, horse