Films made on dreary subjects tend to do less than stellar business. Should revenge drama Badlapur be worried?
Varun Dhawan-starrer Badlapur, out this Friday, make no mistake about it, is a revenge drama and director Sriram Raghavan says there are no breaks in the protagonist's grim determination to get even. No pauses for laughter or, God forbid, item songs. "When you're telling a story about a wronged hero you don't digress. It trivialises his mission," he reasons.
But how do you sell this "realism" to the masses, fed on a regular diet of fantasy, farce and skin?
Anurag Kashyap's Ungli tried - it was called his best work to date by critics and viewers alike - but was a box-office failure.
Then came Neeraj Pandey's Baby, a slick thriller on global terrorism, starring Akshay Kumar. The film did well, critics loved it, but trade experts felt it should have done much, much better.
R Balki teamed up a third time with Big B for Shamitabh. It left the audiences cold. Admits Balki, "Specially the last 20 minutes where the film turned into a tragedy...that killed the film. The audience doesn't want to emerge from the theatre heavy-hearted. They want to feel good about life. The response I got from the audiences when I visited the theatre was , 'Heavy hai'.The audience doesn't want anything heavy."
A few months after Badlapur, Anushka Sharma's gritty NH10 follows. If the trailer is any indication, it will be a fast-paced, nail-biting escape thriller, and in equal doses "dark" and "heavy".
Will Badlapur buck the trend, though? While he admits dark isn't the flavour of the season at the B-O, critic Raja Sen adds, "While such films have always been a hardsell, this one seems to be both dark and sexy. There is a visceral appeal to this hard actioner. We all hope that Sriram can deliver."
THE BIG QUESTION
Varun Dhawan's the quintessential chocolate-boy hero. Will be successfully trade in the grin for the grim?
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