What’s incredible about Hansal Mehta’s much-talked-about comeback movie is that the film Shahid, the character Shahid and the actor playing Shahid all have the same quality about them. Internal, intense and powerful... it packs a wallop and does that with unflinching calm.

Having created waves at film festivals around the globe, Shahid has finally won itself a theatrical release here at home. Why it took so much time to get a “date” is a no-brainer. On the surface, Shahid has nothing that a Friday release is supposed to have — song and dance, sex and action, stars and starlets. It spends most of its time in jails and courtrooms, features mostly new and unknown faces and doesn’t even have a happy ending.

How can it have one? Shahid traces the life of lawyer and human rights activist Shahid Azmi, who was shot dead in his office by a couple of assailants in 2010. His crime? He stood up and fought for all those who he believed were wrongly accused or framed and imprisoned for alleged terrorist activities.

Shahid could almost smell these unfortunate souls, spot them from a distance. He himself was one, picked up from his home for being around during the 1993 Mumbai riots. His doomed streak continued next in a training camp in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where he was taught to be a jehadi. He managed to run away but was nailed under TADA and left to rot in Tihar Jail for the next seven years.

The boy, though, had other ideas. Encouraged by senior inmates to study, Shahid immersed himself in books in prison and by the time he got back home in 2000, he was ready to pursue law as his career. In the years that followed, Shahid became the go-to man for every man wrongly booked by the law.

Driven by the simple philosophy “Jurm karnewaale aur jurm sehnewaale dono ka koi mazhab nahin hota” and a few inspirational quotes from the celebrated criminal defence trial attorney Roy Black, Shahid got 17 acquittals in seven years, an exceptionally high number for the Indian judiciary, where you only get taareekh pe taareekh. In his mission he did ruffle the feathers of a few not-so-good men ultimately resulting in the murder at his office, that starts and ends the film.

Having made everything from a dark satire like Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar to a sex comedy like Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai, Hansal Mehta really comes into his own with what is his first release in five years. Straightforward and minimalist, his treatment is refreshing and quite a clutter-breaker at that. It’s in the little nuances and the minute details he lends to Shahid’s world that the journey of the legal crusader truly comes alive. Welcome back, Hansal!

Played by the astonishingly brilliant Raj Kumar Yadav, who shone earlier in the year in Kai Po Che!, Shahid becomes the very epitome of strength and empathy. Like all great actors, Yadav knows that less is more on screen and he does so much by doing so little. Even when he is just there in the frame hardly doing anything, you can’t take your eyes off Yadav.

Punjabi actress Prabhleen Sandhu plays Mariam, Shahid’s client who he falls in love with and eventually marries. She along with Shahid’s family members and his clients are all so well cast (by Mukesh Chhabra) making everyone believable and the film real. Kay Kay Menon, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Vipin Sharma are terrific in their cameos.

Unrelenting, gritty and powerful, Shahid is one of the best films of the year. Attend the hearing before it is overruled by the theatres.