YAYS!

HAASIL (2003)
The first glimpse of what this man would be all about. Never cast in anything as important before, director friend Tigmanshu Dhulia put Irrfan bang in the middle of the action as the evil Ranvijay Singh.

MAQBOOL (2003)
Irrfan’s first collaboration with Vishal Bhardwaj saw him play a quiet and intense version of Macbeth trying to murder his way up the Mumbai underworld ranks. Surrounded by the best actors in the business — Pankaj Kapur to Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri to Tabu — Irrfan shone like no other.

THE NAMESAKE (2006)
His first-ever screen appearance was in Salaam Bombay. Mira Nair remembered Irrfan from those NSD days. So when she went about casting the Jhumpa Lahiri adaptation, Mira chose him as Ashoke Ganguli. Arguably his best performance till date, as brilliant in the young-age romance with Tabu as in the old-age friction with Kal Penn.

LIFE IN A... METRO (2007)
Despite Maqbool, Irrfan was denied the good films and the good roles in Bollywood. Till Anurag Basu cast him in this ensemble drama. While every strand worked, the one with Irrfan and Konkona was the most heart-warming. Monty was as memorable as Maqbool. 

BILLU (2009)
It’s not easy to make Shah Rukh Khan look redundant. Irrfan did that. That too in a Shah Rukh Khan production, playing the title role of the golden-hearted barber. His emotional scenes with his on-screen kids are pure gold.

PAAN SINGH TOMAR (2012)
Playing a real-life person for the first time and that too in a biopic, Irrfan really got into the shoes of sprinter-turned-dacoit Tomar. He brought a rare humanity to the character that won hearts everywhere.

THE LUNCHBOX (2013)
Irrfan’s performance as the dull, dutiful, loveless Saajan Fernandes who blossoms into an upbeat,
full-of-life romantic is like a symphony played to the last perfect note. Pooja Bhatt had once told us that you can keep the camera rolling on Irrfan and forget about it. The Lunchbox shows you just why.

PIKU (2015)
You step into a film almost as a sideshow (to Amitabh Bachchan and Deepika Padukone, no less!) and by the time the cards have been put down, you have walked away with the movie. In Shoojit Sircar’s father-daughter film, Irrfan showed, yet again, that he doesn’t need a whole lot of screen time to shine the brightest. 

TALVAR (2015)
The man can now “just be” in scene after scene and yet orchestrate a performance so well-crafted that he becomes the moral fulcrum of the entire film. Irrfan’s CBI officer in Meghna Gulzar’s film makes an astonishing promise — the best will keep getting better.

 

NAYS!

KRAZZY 4 (2008)
Irrfan’s OCD-suffering doc was watchable but everything around him was such a noisy mess that you question the choice of the actor who had already done Maqbool, The Namesake and ...Metro.

DIL KABADDI (2008)
Watching Irrfan’s scenes with Payal Rohatgi in this pathetic remake of Husbands and Wives was traumatic.

ACID FACTORY (2009)
Like the characters at the start of this film, we didn’t know what Irrfan Khan was doing in the middle of the mayhem.

KNOCK OUT (2010)
Irrfan of all people would have known that the film is an out-and-out copy of Phone Booth. Yet he received the call and became part of the circus.

JAZBAA (2015)
We are still reeling under the shock. Why does he need to do this at this stage of his career?

Pratim D. Gupta 
Which are your Top 3 Irrfan Khan roles? Tell t2@abp.in