THAR

Director: Raj Singh Chaudhary

Cast: Anil Kapoor, Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Satish Kaushik, Jitendra Joshi, Mukti Mohan

Running time: 108 minutes

The carcass of a water buffalo forms the foreground when the camera first zooms into Thar. The desert, that forms the setting for the film, hides many a secret within its arid, sandy layers. The sound of gunshots frequently rend the air, blood is spilled with abandon and the roots of crime run deep. The camera frequently swoops down, almost like an eagle, over the golden-brown landscape that quickly becomes a character on its own. The film, after all, is named Thar.

A Western with a distinctive noir look and feel, revenge and retribution lie at the heart of Thar. Set in 1985 in the tiny hamlet of Munabao in Rajasthan, the 108-minute film, now streaming on Netflix, is fashioned as a deliberate slow-burn thriller. Except that Thar is not a whodunit. It’s a whydunit, with the killer being unmasked pretty early. ‘Gruesome’ is the only way to describe the modus operandi of the murders. Very early on, a man is shot, an axe driven through his chest and his ear cut off before he’s hung from a tree. Two others have their fingers severed as rodents chip away at their insides. It’s not an easy watch, as also is a horrific scene of physical and sexual abuse that we later learn has been the catalyst for the aforementioned murders.

The killer is on the loose and with a gang of drug mercenaries also running amuck in the region, local cop Surekha Singh, languishing for decades in the low rungs of the hierarchy and facing extreme existentialism, has one last chance to prove his worth before his retirement. Anil Kapoor, sporting a cool salt ’n’ pepper look, plays Surekha Singh as a man who seems deadbeat but still has some fire left in him. He vrooms around on his bike, along with his trusted aide Bhure (Satish Kaushik, always a dependable performer), trying to piece together the twin cases and catch the perpetrators.

The sudden appearance of a silent and secretive stranger (Siddharth, played by Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor), claiming to be a city-based dealer of antiques, only makes matters more complex.

Aided by some compelling camerawork by Shreya Dev Dube and Ajay Jayanthi’s haunting background score, director Raj Singh Chaudhary attempts to weave an intricate story that is ambitious enough to touch upon everything from caste disparity to domestic violence, with gore at its core. Not all of it comes together seamlessly, with parts of Thar, despite an intense sense of foreboding but too many loose ends to ignore, being more slow than slow burn.

Curry Westerns like Sholay, and to some extent Bandit Queen, have etched a firm place for themselves in the annals of Indian cinema, but Thar aims for more of a ‘Man with No Name’ vibe. Siddharth is a man of few words, and Harsh plays him with the intensity that the part demands. Chetna is the only female character with some meat and meaning in the film and Fatima Sana Shaikh portrays her with a quiet fieriness.

If cinematography, sound and setting were the only parameters to judge Thar, the film would rank as one of the best in the genre. But Thar doesn’t quite live up to its initial promise, slowly transcending into one-dimensional drama with a climax that feels wanting.