Jun 29, 2016 09:36 PM
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With an intelligent combination of hardboiled cynicism and broad touches of trippy black humour, the film brings alive a benighted universe where life has lost its way in a drug-induced haze.
The film invokes Punjab's great romantic poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi to accentuate the poignancy of the situation.
The rockstar-protagonist sings of "a girl whose name is love and who is lost" to drive home the evaporation of charm and beauty from the lives of the youth.
In the first 40 minutes of its second half, Udta Punjab is literally trapped in darkness. Director of photography Rajeev Ravi lenses the night-time scenes with great skill, setting up the eventual opening out into a burst of brightness accompanied by an eruption of cathartic violence.
Chaubey's third venture underscores, like Ishqiya and Dedh Ishqiya did, the originality of his directorial voice.
He imparts heady propulsion to a grim theme and constructs an unflinching narrative that does not shy from calling out the forces responsible for Punjab's undeserved plight.
Udta Punjab takes flight without wasting a second - from the very moment the title appears on a flying heroin pouch hurled from across the border by a discus thrower.
It cruises along at an even pace right until the crackling climax, which is shockingly bloody but remarkably effective.
Chaubey's robust directorial style, which enmeshes sharp characterization with evocative use of music(composer Amit Trivedi is in fine fettle here), keeps the tale on the boil even during the occasional stretches where it teeters on the edge of over-articulation.
A pop star Tommy Singh, a nameless Bihari migrant girl, a cynical policeman Sartaj Singh and a doctor who runs a de-addiction centre(Kareena Kapoor Khan) are thrown into dangerous disarray in a climate vitiated by the easy availability of drugs.
