'Ugly' makes for an odd viewing choice in this festive season, but that is no excuse for missing out on this dark, disgusting tale of immorality
Finally 'Ugly' is out on select movie halls across the country, and is in serious danger of being overlooked by crowd pleasers like 'PK'. But do yourself a favor. Anurag Kashyap's latest movie is very much one of the best movies of this year.
'Ugly' deals with the disappearance of a 10 year old girl Kali (Anshika Shrivastava) from her father's car. The father is Rahul Varshney/Kapoor (Rahul Bhat) a wannabe hero who leaves her daughter in the car alone while he goes to meet his agent Chaitanya (Vineet Kumar Singh) . Kali's mother Shalini (Tejaswini Kolhapure) who has a new husband, the police chief Shoumik Bose (Ronit Roy) is an alcoholic women who is in an unhappy marriage. Siddhant (Siddhant Kapoor), Shalini's brother who is in dire need of money and Rakhi Malhotra (Surveen Chawla) a B movie actress who also happens to be Rahul's lover complete the set of players. This disappearence leads to the reveal of the ugliness present inside all of them, which is further fueled by past relationships and extreme levels of egoism.
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Rahul Bhat and Vineet Kumar Singh's performances are nuanced enough that they keep us guessing till the very end |
Mr.Kashyap's 'Black Friday' was excellent but held down by real life facts. No such problem arises in this fictional movie where he is free to play with character emotions without any constraints and real life limitations. But such a free hand leads to few problems. For starters, nobody has a redeeming side, everyone is out playing games on others. This make the characters mere caricatures and hard to relate to. Also, we care very little about Kali and more about who the culprit is. As a result of which the ending is shocking and grim but devoid of any emotions. Some character motivations are unexplained and stick out as sore thumbs in presence of other, more fleshed out characters. But these failures are small in front of the movie's successes.
The cinematography is wonderful, with a gloomy color palette and like 'Black Friday', Kashyap's frequent use of close-ups provide a claustrophobic feeling which keeps the audience uncomfortable throughout the movie. The script is excellent. The complete sequence in the police station involving Jadhav is one of the best scenes of this year.
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Ronit Roy gives another strong performance as police chief Shoumik |
The performances are uniformly good. Special shout-out should be given to Tejaswini Kolhapure and Ronit Roy. Ronit Roy continues the resurgence in his career with this role successfully. National award winning Marathi actor Girish Kulkarni makes his Hindi film debut portraying Inspector Jadhav and is excellent throughout.
'Ugly' is uncomfortable and not for the faint hearted. People beat each other, abuse profusely and the movie does not shy away from portraying harsh realities. It may not be as ambitious as 'Gangs of Wasseypur' and 'Black Friday' but is an oddly personal experience and an excellent end to a somewhat disappointing year in movies.
well analysed and well written!!...:)
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