Dum Maaro Dum

A slickly crafted crime thriller: stylishly shot, crisply edited. But it gets exhausting midway...

Namrata Joshi

Updated on: 5 February 2022 7:46 pm

Dum Maaro Dum

Starring: Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Prateik Babbar, Rana Daggubati
Directed by Rohan Sippy
Rating:

In Dum Maaro Dum, writer Shridhar Raghavan does a ‘Keyser Soze’ on us. Taking a leaf out of The Usual Suspects, he takes us on the chase of a Soze-like villain called Michael Barbossa and shoves in a proverbial twist in the tale. Does Barbossa exist for real or only in our imagination? The backdrop is real—a ‘jannat’ called Goa hit by the drugs trade. It’s an organised corporate setup with its recruitments, sales and exports divisions. The state is divided into pockets of peddlers from Russia, Nigeria, Israel, France and the one lording over this ‘drugs ka Disneyland’ is a shadowy Barbossa who keeps changing his identity, Vincent Vega once, Colin Coutino another time. ACP Vishnu Kamath (Abhishek) is out to nab Barbossa, whose innocent victims are a young Lawrie (Prateik), Jokie (Rana) and his girlfriend Zoe (Bipasha).

Director Rohan Sippy fashions a slickly crafted crime thriller: it’s stylishly shot and crisply edited. Smart lines are thrown in, for each and every character. There is also enough emotional quotient—family talk, friendships and heart-breaking deaths. However, even the high emotions are articulated in a terse, offhand manner, making the film self-conscious and indulgent. Moreover, the narrative gets exhausting midway, making one wish for an early resolution. The climax does aim at being tantalising, but is executed in slapdash manner.

Abhishek gets an author-backed role here, stitched to his personality, be it that careless swagger, the sensitive teary-eyes, the deadpan attitude, those wolf-whistle lines or that rocking rap song, Thayn Thayn. But dig deeper and you wonder if his persona is any different from the Neil Menon he played a few weeks ago in Game? Not really. Also, can he stop being his father’s son? The referencing to Khaike paan banaraswala, however cool, is so lame. Rana is all meat but his acting chops are not convincing enough. Prateik is effortless. Be it a boy in love or getting bashfully initiated into sex and drugs, he brings in a vulnerability and fluidity all his own. However, for me the find of this film is Gulshan Devaiah in the throwaway role of drug peddler Ricky. Very brief, but arresting!

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