Soumik Sen 2014 India
Starring: Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla, Divya Jagdale, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Priyanka Bose
Soumik Sen's Gulaab Gang comes with an immediate warning - and I'm not referring to the Hindi anti-smoking commercial slotted in after the opening credits and the 'Smoking is injurious to your health' that pops up in the bottom corner every time a character lights up. 'Any resemblance to the life and work of Ms. Sampat Pal, wife of Munnilal Pal of District Banda, Uttar Pradesh or any organization that is run by her is purely coincidental' beams a disclaimer. Sampat Pal is an Indian social activist whose vigilante group, the laathi-wielding Gulabi Gang, have spent years fighting (often violently) for the rights of women. As of 2014 the faction is said to have anywhere between 270,000 and 400,000 members and has made great strides in preventing child marriages and encouraging education for women in Northern India. When the film was announced Pal sought a withdrawal as she felt that the producers had no right to make a biopic without her permission but Sen insisted the film wasn't based on Pal. It plainly is. Even down to some of the incidents in the narrative and the pink saris members of the gang wear it's Gulabi through and through but after a long battle in various courts the film has seen a release. An interesting story even before proceedings start then, which is lucky because what's encompassed in the two hours after they do is largely terrible. Almost everybody not in the gang is a corrupt and over-the-top (even for Bollywood) cliché. One official is a gluttonous, watermelon-dribbling villain seemingly on loan from a Batman cartoon and early on an abusive policeman beating his fiancé and sending her packing because the dowry he's been offered is too small cackles and cleans his teeth as he menaces her turning what should be a deeply upsetting event into an exaggerated failure, drained of the significant power it should hold. When said violent bastard then does a 360 personality jump and is redeemed as a newly enlightened, loving and forgivable husband the change not only feels extraordinarily sudden but also profoundly disturbing. Later plot developments involve limb snapping, rape and scythes to the gentle area but light-hearted service resumes almost immediately and everyone's laughing, joking and singing in (poor) musical sequences. By the time the murders start you'll be unlikely to still be awake let alone concerned. Somehow the producers pulled off an astonishing coup by signing up two of the biggest female stars of the late 1980's/early 1990's, Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla (who had never worked together before), to play the leads. Dixit gives an assured performance but finds it hard to get past the riddles she's compelled to speak in and the reverence afforded her and Chawla loses herself somewhere within her character's drift between humiliating evildoers and ordering hits and just does a lot of Robert De Niro head wobbles. Add in ridiculous action sequences that make your average Jackie Chan movie look like an understated Romanian drama about fishing and any hope for respite from the lack of entertainment seeps away like piss in a gutter. A colossal waste of everybody's time, money and worthy subject matter. Watch something else from the back catalogues of Dixit or Chawla instead, practically anything will do.
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