You can censor a few words, you can censor some shots, you can censor gore but you can’t censor the hurt, you can’t censor the guts and you can’t censor the rage. Almost disallowed to come to theatres, NH10 is perhaps the most important film to have come out from this country in quite some time. Not because of the thrills and chills but somewhere in the collective mindspace of all the characters shown in the film you get to see today’s India. Not shining, but burning India.

Very early in the film when Anushka Sharma’s Meera is attacked by two men on a bike in the middle of the night, she is told by a policeman that Gurgaon is a “badhta bachha” waiting to jump. Her husband Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam) gets her a gun licence but he also whisks her away for her birthday celebrations beyond Gurgaon, “where democracy and Constitution end after the last mall”.

At a dhaba off the highway, Arjun and Meera spot a couple being beaten up by a gang of villagers. In our nation of bystanders even as everyone stands and watches, Arjun decides to intervene but gets slapped by the gang leader (Darshan Kumaar). His male ego surfaces and Arjun decides to follow the gang in his car and confront them. And that’s where the madness begins.

From thereon NH10 is an edge-of-the-seat, unrelenting cat-and-mouse chase where every decision by Meera keeps turning the wheels of the thriller. There is an almost frenzied sense of fear and impending danger lurking in the dark and the dust. The screenplay is written (by Sudip Sharma) so smartly that it subverts all stereotypes and makes you believe that the next character Meera is going to bump into would surely help her, only to be proved otherwise. 

The proverbial twist comes in the last half hour with the introduction of a new character. You saw the name in the opening credits but you haven’t seen this actor in the promos of the film and it’s a niggling feeling at the back of your mind what part the person would play in the scheme of things. The subtext of NH10 lies in that sarpanch of the village; how the gender blame game will make you run round and round in circles. 

Because at the heart of NH10 is gender discrimination. Much before the mayhem ensues, the film subtly shows how women continue to be belittled at home –– “women can’t read maps” –– and at work –– “women get special favours from bosses” –– and that too in very urban spaces. And when you sit down for a quiet smoke in the bathroom of a dhaba, you see ‘randi’ written on the door. It doesn’t matter who sits on that pot, for those few moments that woman has been prefixed. Clearly she doesn’t need to marry someone from a different caste for her honour to be killed.

As cliched as it reads, Anushka Sharma is the hero of the film. Not just for her performance –– which is adequate in the depiction of Meera’s distress, desperation and eventual destruction of the evil around her –– but also for backing the project. It’s so heartening to see one of Bollywood’s top star actresses get into movie production with something as potent as NH10. 

Neil Bhoopalam is just right as the man who wants to be the perfect partner but is stupid enough to rustle up the mardonwaali baat at the wrong times. Darshan Kumaar, who played Mary Kom’s husband in the boxer’s biopic, is menacing enough although his dialogue delivery continues to be weak. And it’s good to see Ravi Jhankal in action after so long. 

NH10 is a violent film. But even if you have to look away from the screen sometimes, go and watch this one night in Meera’s life. She is not the doomed daughter of India you read about in the papers or watch on YouTube because what she does in the end is straight out of a fairy tale. An adult fairy tale. The adult fairy tale you should watch and then perhaps give a thought about how you want to raise your children. Whatever be their gender.

NH10 (A)
Director: Navdeep Singh
Cast: Anushka Sharma, Neil Bhoopalam, Darshan Kumaar
Running time: 115 minutes

Pratim D. Gupta
Is NH10 the most path-breaking Bollywood film of the year? Tell t2@abp.in