WAZIR (U/A)
Director: Bejoy Nambiar
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Farhan Akhtar, Aditi Rao Hydari, Neil Nitin Mukesh, John Abraham, Manav Kaul
Running time: 103 minutes

Wazir was supposed to be Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s first Hollywood film. It was called ‘The Fifth Move’ and everyone from Dustin Hoffman to Paul Newman was supposedly keen to do the film. That’s according to Chopra himself. What we know for sure is that no such film ever got made and Broken Horses was the not-so-galloping first move in the West for VVC.

Now Bejoy Nambiar has directed the script in a Bollywood movie. The story has been credited to Chopra, who’s also taken credit for screenplay, editing and lyrics! Anyway, is this the same story? Because no Holly man, Hoffman or Newman, would have said ‘yes’ to this sentimental slush disguised as a thriller.

Or has the script been dumbed down for the Indian audiences? Because when Chopra was desperate to make ‘The Fifth Move’ in Hollywood, he was quoted as saying: “The maturity level of the average (Indian) cinemagoer is very low. It is very difficult to make them understand such subjects.” How sweet!

Well there’s nothing that can’t be understood about Wazir. You can predict the twist in the tail right from the interval or even earlier. Depending on your “maturity level”. It’s the tale of two men who have lost their daughters. One an anti-terrorist squad officer Daanish (Farhan Akhtar) and the other an old man who teaches kids to play chess,

Panditji (Amitabh Bachchan). It’s a teary state of affairs dipped in a melancholy background score the Wazir premise is.

Panditji is convinced that the welfare minister Yazaad Qureshi (Manav Kaul) is behind the “accidental” death of his daughter, and he wants revenge. Daanish, who’s suspended from the police force for killing the terrorist who killed his daughter in the film’s opening shootout, becomes friends with Panditji over many rounds of chess. Even one where the pieces are inside shot glasses; if a piece gets killed, you have to down the vodka in the glass. Now, who would want to win?

Scriptwriters Chopra and Abhijat Joshi’s best works include the likes of Lage Raho Munnabhai, 3 Idiots and PK. They write heartwarming films about friendship and love and pack in a strong social message. Wazir is no different but because the genre here is an action thriller, all that emotional tugging actually brings the pace of the film to a crashing halt at many points in both halves.

Also, Bejoy, who earlier made Shaitan and David, was perhaps not the right choice to helm Wazir. His big visual flourishes work in the action sequences, the shootouts done very well in Call of Duty style. But only super slo-mo shots of silent stares at each other is not exactly quality investment in such a story. And for a 103-minute film to have as many songs as Wazir has, it’s criminal.

It’s the performances from the two men on two sides of the chess board that make the film so much more watchable. Farhan is excellent with a flawless graph of a man being tossed and tonked around by circumstances. Whether he is angry or anxious, happy or harried, delirious or drunk, the emotions sit just right.

Bachchan has an incredible appearance scene, really carving out a fresh new character of a helpless but optimistic old man in just a few moments. But thereafter he often switches back to the Bachchan we have seen many times before. Still, there’s nobody who maaroes dialogue like the man and he’s got some terrific lines in the movie.
Aditi Rao Hydari looks beautiful in the close-ups. Neil Nitin Mukesh thankfully comes really late and leaves very early.

And it’s difficult to fathom why John Abraham would do the special appearance he’s done in Wazir.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s secret formula for Parinda was to make The Godfather and The Sound of Music in the same film. He is still trying to reprise that. But the game seems to have changed in these many years and the Indian audience is “mature” enough to call the bluff when you play with two queens to protect your king.

Who did you like better in Wazir, Amitabh Bachchan or Farhan Akhtar? Tell t2@abp.in