Vanessa Carvalho, Mardani

The story is a crime thriller about a fearless female cop and a heartless villain, PradeepSarkar’s “woman-oriented” movie follows the exploits and bravery of Shivani Shivaji Roy (Rani Mukerji), a Mumbai crime branch senior inspector who springs into action when a girl child she knows, goes missing. She tracks down the villains in Delhi and of course ends them brutally showing of her macho side.The movies sexist title informs us in advance about the cops bravery, honesty and dedication.The film gets

over-the-top towards the finale with Rani showing of her fighting skills rather than simply using the gun and getting over with it, the ending is sort of stereotypical and over-dramatic with a message and some facts about the child trafficking trade thrown on screen. India is the ‘hub’ of this trade and throughout the film Delhi is shown the hub of child trafficking, something I disagreed with and equally disliked.
Rani carries the film on her shoulder single handedly, and her work in the action and acting department is good enough but the simple fact that she can do everything on her own is not convincing. Her dialogue delivery and Marathi slang is funny. The film manages to stick to its topic and not over sensationalise the issue it portrays like the other cop – villain films.The film is raw and gritty minus the song and dance, the background score is serious and tense which complements the story. The beginning of the movie is silent without any backgrounds score just the conversation of two cops on their talkie which builds the mood for the film. The introductory scene of the lead is very original and normal; the cop is shown in her true form not with flying cars and 1000 dancers. Mardaani has a dark opening where there is an undercover operation spearheaded by Rani shown which helps the movie start on a good note but as it progresses the movie gets confused between procedural and procedure, no explanations are given for Rani’s actions and of course the villain has to lose his intelligence towards the end so that he could be caught, not enough building of character or mood.The movie no doubt is a good attempt but it certainly does not match the hype and buzz it created before its release.