All Talk and No Action Saturday, January 8, 2011

I went for No One Killed Jessica (NOKJ), hoping to relive the furore and activism the incident had ignited in people across the country. It was an extra ordinary case, where most of us connected with the personal loss of the Lals. The relentless pursuit of justice by the media was also commendable here.

When you re-tell a story of such venality and subversion of justice, it demands of you to take the story to it's natural peak. The Jessica Lal case is heroic in many ways.



NOKJ, the movie, fails on this parameter.

With a very gripping first half, the movie languishes in the second half. A complete let down. As an audience, I wanted to relive the public hysteria and subsequent jubilation on hearing the Supreme Court's verdict. Maybe, even an exhausted Vidya Balan celebrating with a champagne. The movie offers none of this.

Amit Trivedi's music is uplifting as usual. While Vidya Balan is competent, Rani's Meera act is over done and doesn't impress.

Rediff and Mumbai Mirror nail it better. I don't subscribe to their ratings.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even I thought second half was a let down. First half was pacy though. Too many loose ends. I think they had half baked script.

I disagree on other fronts though, I thought Trivedi's music (background) was too loud for the setup.In songs 'Delhi' and 'Aitbar' both were good.

They also failed at casting dept. Specially the lawyer and Jessica's Mom.

I liked Rani's(may be she had a easily character to play) performance more than Vidya's :D


We needed some one like Madhur or Dibakar directing this movie.

All Talk and No Action said...

@ATC - Ohhh Jessica's Mom! Don't even get me started... what a drama queen, and, a pathetic one at that! :D

You see, I wrote this piece with dis-interest... hence left out many grouses I held with the movie... Rediff and Minty Tejpal have done a good job of saying what I wanted to :)

About Rani's character : I thought all the cussing could have been avoided. To show a tough act, cussing need not always be used. Preity (Lakshya) and Atul's (Page 3) journalist acts prove this.

To be fair, I thought Vidya was okay. Not superlative. However, in comparison between the two, I would vouch for Vidya.

I thought Rajkumar Gupta was competent to handle this one. Aamir was hard hitting cinema too. But...

Anonymous said...

I think the movie was awesome. But people were so obsessed with the use of vulgar words in the movie that they didn't pay enought attention to the main theme. Ah! the Indian audience.

All Talk and No Action said...

@punit - The more I think, the lesser I think of the movie... but, to each his own :-)

Thanks for stopping by.