MAALIK - Usual gangster drama which demands new ideas to engage
ONE LINE:
A son of an ordinary farmer killed a man who had hit his father. At that moment, Deepak became the great Maalik, a ruthless gangster of the local town. Love, action, betrayal, and politics that he faced during this journey, and the path to his fate, are the remains.
The movie starts off with a high build-up scene of the gangster overruling the police in a very awkward way. From then onwards, the usual gangster story begins. As a well-established don, he wants to take part in the local Assembly election. His rival gangster and the current politician, who was endangered by Maalik's political entry, joined hands and set many traps to kill him. Though he survives, they brought a policeman who had been involved in many encounters. His entry and the first episode of him searching for Maalik in his home are good and gave the audience hope that things will spice up here after. But nothing happened, things went in vain as his character lost his temper and became more vulnerable towards the climax.
Rajkumar Rao is the main reason for me to watch this film. His acting is too good and single-handedly carried the movie on his shoulders. He looks more rugged and fierce throughout his character arc. He also performed well during the flashback portions and made the transition phase from Deepak to Maalik in a very promising way. Though his character is so much alive, things went open and demand much writing to be as coherent as possible.
Manushi Chhillar, who played the wife of Maalik, performed nicely. However, her character was not well-written, particularly in the second half of the film. Knowing that she was pregnant and listening to her words, Maalik gave up everything and was ready to surrender himself, which was senseless and added nothing interesting to the story. After this, the usual gangster drama became more predictable, which led to the audience losing engagement.
The 20 to 25 minute flashback portion just before the interval was good, particularly the scene where Maalik kills the man gorily, who hit his father and wraps him with firecrackers. As he walks, the crackers are bursting behind him, with the BGM absolutely banger for a good interval. This old template gangster drama needs many more engaging scenes and some interesting things to be done. You can give it a watch for Rajkumar Rao once.
