Director: Karan Anshuman
Cast: Ritesh Deshmukh, Jacqueline Fernandez & Pulkit Samrat
Director Karan Anshuman has followed the same oft repeated & beaten to death path of terrorism topic in ‘Bangistan’, mainly with the same satirical depiction of the same anti – terrorist elements existing between the 2 countries India & Pakistan since they got Independence. And after watching the film everyone will agree that it was purely a puerile & futile attempt and a waste of time, energy & finances of everyone concerned including this reviewer & of course the cine goers too.
Any ways the dullest scenario of ‘Bangistan’ kick starts with the ‘demographical introduction’ of a fictitious country named ‘Bangistan’. The country is divided into 2 parts with North Bangistan occupied by the Muslims while South Bangistan is occupied by the Hindus. As the name suggests, the country is full of people who believe that the only way to bring peace to the world is by means of violence and the south & the north are always at war with each other. On the other hand, the focus shifts to a video conferencing call between religious heads of Bangistan, Imaam (Tom Alter) & Shankaracharya (Shiv Subramaniam), discussing about the upcoming ’13th World Religious Conference’ that is to be held in Poland. Then there happens to be the introduction of Hafeez Bin Ali aka Harold (Riteish Deshmukh), who quits his job at a call centre after a certain ‘religious backlash’. He then gets handpicked by the chief of ‘Al – Kaam Tamaam’ to represent their outfit and to become a suicide bomber to blow up the peace conference. In order to avoid being ‘recognized’ by anyone, he completely metamorphosis into a Hindu as ‘Ishwarchand Sharma’. On the other hand, there also exists a struggling actor Pravin Chaturvedi (Pulkit Samrat), a devout Hindu and also a follower of the religious Hindu outfit ‘Maa Ka Dal’. He too gets handpicked by the leader of ‘Maa Ka Dal’ in order to double up as a human bomb at the peace conference. Just like Hafeez, Pravin too undergoes a completele metamorphosis, the only difference being that he disguises himself as a Muslim under the name of ‘Allah Rakha’. Destiny makes the duo meet each other not only at the airport on reaching Poland (where they strip themselves to their bare minimum on ‘humanitarian grounds’), but also end up as neighbours. Noticing how much they respect each other’s religion and how similar they are, the duo become close friends in an alien country..…..until one day Pravin discovers the real motive of Hafeez Bin Ali.
Director Karan Anshuman utterly fails to connect with the audiences in all aspects & respects. He has projected himself as a bad director as he not only lacks the directional skills & expertise but also fails to extract work from both his cast & crew. Here again he has wasted everyone’s talent. The first thing he should do is to take a sabbatical and then to take a fresh & intense course in direction. Besides why make such films and increase more enmity between the Hindus & the Muslims or more espcially between India & Pakistan. Just let everyone be in peace and refrain from making such non – sensical films in future.
Performance wise there is not even a single performance that can be singled out for holding out even an iota of interest of the viewers. Everyone from Ritesh to Pulkit to Jacqueline and even the bit roles players seemed to be disinterested and have sleep walked throughout the film.
Tail Piece: Stay miles away from a film called ‘Bangistan’ even in your wildest dreams.
