Mumbai Meri Jaan Review
Movie: Mumbai Meri Jaan; Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Irrfan Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Madhavan, Paresh Rawal and Vijay Maurya; Director: Nishikant Kamat; Rating: ***
Post 2006 train bomb blasts in Mumbai, there was a newspaper headline — "Mumbai Ripped Apart". The same day, another national daily carried the same news, but with a different approach towards it. It read — "Mumbai Survives". It was just the difference in various point of views from which people looked at the entire incident.
Film 'Mumbai Meri Jaan' tries to deal with the same. At one level, it shows how there are people who overcame the fear of bomb blasts and moved on in life as if nothing has changed. While there is another sect of people whose lives have forever been unsettled because of this incident.
Nikhil Agarwal (Madavan) - a patriotic corporate guy, ASI Patil (Paresh Rawal) — A corrupt but practical cop, Suresh (Kay Kay Menon) — an unemployed frustrated youth, Thomas (Irrfan) — a roadside tea/coffe vendor and Rupali (Soha Ali Khan) — a TV news reporter are few of the characters whose lives get affected due to this blast.
Madhavan gets saved that day due to a friend of his who doesn't allow him to travel in 1st class compartment of the local train. But his friend loses his hand. Obviously, the sight of the blast doesn't allow him to go anywhere near the train again. He develops a sort of phobia.
Similarly, Kay Kay Menon's belief that muslims are responsible for all this gets futher strengthened when he finds couple of muslim lads missing from his locality right after the blasts.
Paresh Rawal's take that nothing can be changed into this system continues as he approaches the day of his retirement.
Irrfan's anger towards the society keeps on building following humiliation at their hands at every step in life. And that pushes him to create a series of hoax bomb calls throughout the city.
Soha Ali Khan, too, tastes the trauma of affected people when she loses her own fiancé in the blasts. It is then that she realizes how and what does a person goes through when, after losing a near and dear one, news channel anchor asks him/her — "Kaisa mehsoos ho raha hai apko? (How are you feeling now?)
All of them try tackling their issue on their own. And by the end of it, all of them move on in life. And that has been portrayed as the 'spirit of Mumbai'. Hence the name — "Mumbai Meri Jaan".
Brilliant performances by Paresh Rawal and Irrfan. In fact one of their best performances so far.
Superb direction and cinematography. Nishikant Kamat continues with his realistic approach post 'Dombivali Fast'.
The script could have been a little tighter though. Because of lengthy scenes, the story doesn't seem to be moving and makes you impatient.
Otherwise, the movie is very good if you want to see something realistic.
A film worth watching.
— Sampurn Anand (SAMPURN)
To start-off let me just first tell you that a movie could possibly have a good cinematography, nice story, and even a few good dialogues accompanied with a pleasingly nice backdrop as standalone; but it's really rare to have them all at one place and tickling that good movie chemical reaction in a bollywood style…yup that's really rare…but amidst all oddities a small gang of actors made our lethargic, numb, dead soul fire on ire to become belligerent against serial bomb blasts.
I cannot withhold myself but praise the actors you name any, say it Paresh Rawal, Menon, Irfan, Madhavan or Soha or even seemingly oblivious Vijay Maurya. One could really admire the depth the director has in the understanding of the human emotions. it wasn't just someone crying beating his chest but even the subtle emotions were very precariously handled. This movie really gave us a break from the series of routine sleazy flicks. This is more of a documentary just because it contains some heavy, serious issues or else it contains all of the enigmatic charm of a great movie.
But the real worthy candidate worth praise is definitely the writer who brings forth to us different characters from downtrodden to well-off, from utopian school of thought to the bohemian, from police to media; and the series of events and psychological changes which gets kick started as aftermath of these crisis. The only scope of improvement was that the actual bomb blast could have been more visual but perhaps that too was done deliberately as the theme of the movie was to show not the obvious but the emotions and cries which other wise would have unheard-of. Again Paresh truly enthralled us with complex blend of deep thoughts amalgamated in humour and the way he passed on the messages of witholding the inter-religious confronts and to take onto the hardships of life to do something worthwhile before dying.
This movie surely could if not "would", amass amazing amount of moolah but if it fails then it's surely to blame onto the lack of publicity and not the movie making. Hands-off from my side to the team.
i m gonna watch it …..i ll put ma review later
Good movie…must see
**** stars
This was a brilliant movie…in fact one of the the three best movies of 2008 alongwith Welcome to Sajjanpur and Wednesday.
No matter how many awards Ghajni and ‘Rub ne bana dee jodee’ wins, people who understand cinema and powerful performances must watch this kind of movies.
Paresh Rawal’s perfect act of a corrupt cop, someone who moves with the bad system but is actually a good person, Irrfan’s acting without much dialogues, speaking his feelings through expressions and eyes and Madhavan who symbolizes people in the corporate world who are patriotic to the core and think about the nation.
I felt that especially the last scene awesome and brilliantly shot.
Madhavan had momentarily become disillusioned by the blasts and overall state of affairs in India and was contemplating settling abroad like some of his friends.
In the end all people of Mumbai keep 2 mins silence for the people who died in the blast. At that moment Madhavan standing in the train again feels proud for his nation and a drop of tear runs down his face.
Brilliant expression there, perfectly shot and that is what we call cinema!