Madras Cafe is a serious film. It is a gritty, intense film, on a serious topic which had yet to be touched by 'Bollywood'. It show's a sense of evolution in Indian makers, to get out of the cliched war movie against Pakistan.
Madras Cafe is the story of the tamil revolution led by LTTE, and the assassination of the great Rajiv Gandhi. The movie is primarily focused from the view of RAW [Research and Analysis Wing] [the primary intelligence agency of India] and of Major Vikram Singh, potrayed by John Abraham. The movie follows, a heavily used style of storytelling, i.e, in terms of flashbacks, where Vikram Singh recites his story to a priest in a church.
The movie starts with the showing of the civil war in Sri Lanka, and the sending of Indian forces to make peace, which are thwarted, and thus, the sending of RAW's golden boy himself, Major Vikram, to get a solution. He, is there, played out by the LTF [name of LTTE in the movie] and someone from the agency itself. The story goes on, plots discovered, the traitor fount out, LTF hell bent on taking action against India.
A plot to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi is launched and even though RAW is aware of the plot, it is not able to halt it. The nation loses a great hero, the conspirators caught and punished, and major Vikram spiralling into a rabbit hole, filled with guilt and grief at his, and the country's failures, before finding redemption in the church and helping the Briths journalisy, Jaya [Nagris Fakhri] publish the story uncovering the deatils of civil war and assassination.
Simple film, can't do much about the story, as it is based on true events. Well shot, with great use of the locations in Sri Lanka. John Abraham's acting in good enough, though he can be better. Nagris, is 33. Seriously, I'm not kidding. The fact that she looks stunning at even this age is awe-worthy. She had a neglible role, but still made the best of it.
Rashi Khanna (Ruby), Siddharth Basu (RD) and Prakash Belwadi (Bala) satisfy their roles.
One thing, I'm glad of, is, that Bollywood didn't follow it's cliched habit, and there was no romance between Vikram and Jaya. A serious film, should remain a serious film. In all, a good try at a highly different theme by Soorjit Sircar from his first movie, Vicky Donor. Delighted to see, such versatile directors exist in our cinema.
My Rating - 7.2/10
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