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. 

Tejasvi Momaya

Why the face when Mardaani was mentioned?
Well, here is why...
 Honestly I had heard really good things about the film and hence
decided to go for it and for those of you who know me well know that I
don't like many mainstream films. I was disappointed. It was
refreshing in the sense that it was not a typical Yash Raj film about
love and family and it was not as sensational as Dabangg or Singham
where the audience is asked to believe that cars can defy the laws of
physics and the protagonist can kick a person and send him across to
infinity. Mardaani comes close to reality, but that brings out another
major issue that people believe everything shown on screen to be real
which it may not be. Especially when it comes to laws that are shown
in the film, not sure how much of it is true. The attempt to chose a
female protagonist fails miserably because Rani Mukherjee could not
pull off the character well. The dialogues in the film sound very off,
and you think, "No! No one speaks like that in this situation". They
contradict with the casual, close to reality feel that the film has
successfully brought out through the way its shot and edited with
little use of background music and more use of ambient sound. They
have left out the obvious Yash Raj film elements like no lovey-dovey
song sequences but have fallen back to the roots in the end with a
stretched fight scene between Rani and the baddie where she chooses to
show off her fighting skills over simply using her weapon. There are
parts where you appreciate the fact that they have tried on something
different and parts where you just aren't convinced. For example- The
character of the main antagonist is developed as someone who is very
clever and does not leave any traces behind. But in the end obviously
because Shivani Roy (Rani's character) has to out smart him he does
some thing as stupid as leaving her alone in a room. Sorry, not
convincing he would do anything of this sort EVER! But the audience
seemed to be enjoying the Shivani bits where she along with her team
manages to track and arrest criminals in unconventional ways. The film
also portrays the function of the police department in quiet an
accurate way where sometimes they have to work with the help of the
criminals to reach the head of the crime chain. Also the film shows
the shades of Grey of the department with dialogues like, "Mera Kam
karega toh Hafta nai dena padega." The film works on some levels but
it lost me towards the end where it became very predictable and lost
its close to reality built-up.
The pic- Last scene where Shivani is fighting the bad guy (Walt)
instead if using a gun