Minority report

Dhokha
Direction: Pooja Bhatt
Cast: Muzammil Ibrahim, Tulip Joshi
Rating: **

Pooja Bhatt makes a brave attempt to make a socially relevant film with 'Dhokha', focussing on the alienation of the minority community and the psyche of a suicide bomber. But she leaves it half- baked by simplifying the whole issue and reducing it to a casual game of cops and robbers.

Zaid Ahmed Khan (Muzammil Ibrahim) is a conscientious cop whose personal life with wife Sara (Tulip Joshi) is idyllic. When there is a terror attack in a club and it is found that it was his wife who was the suicide bomber his life comes apart. Unable to understand her motivation so at odds with the seemingly calm life they shared, he sets out to probe her past and her confederates till he encounters Omar Faridi, the leader of the group. 

It is what he discovers about Sara's past that is troubling. Evidently, she had been the victim of abuse in her native Kashmir and the incident had turned both her and her brother into insurgents. Is the film justifying her stance? What about the hundreds of terrorists out there who are brain washed into believing?

Will their story ever be told? And is it really possible that the leader of a fanatic fundamentalist group, as this obviously is, would so easily reveal himself, that too to a cop? It is surprising that a writer of Mahesh Bhatt's calibre ,who gave us the hard hitting and yet touching 'Zakhm', should have written such an unconvincing plot.

The plus is that the film makes you think. Have Muslims been marginalised to such an extent that their only recourse is violence? Has the judiciary failed them so completely? Pooja Bhatt's attention to the nitty gritty in production design is obvious as she paints pretty pictures with her scenes even as she batters your mind with what is happening. Anshuman Mahaley's cinematography is inspired. 

Muzammil Ibrahim is a good looker but not convincing as an actor as models generally aren't in their first few films. It doesn't help that he has to essay such a complex role. Tulip Joshi is strictly ok. Munish Makhija is a non-starter as the dreaded terrorist Omar Faridi.

But what pray is Aushima Sawhney (she plays Zaid's ex girlfriend who strangely, takes it upon herself to look after him after his wife passes away) doing? Except for haranguing the man and wearing a series of asymmetrical clothes, she has no presence or relevance. Maybe the magic word is asymmetrical, which is what the film is too. It sets out to be realistic but ends up being ambiguous.