Raid is a procedural drama that gives us the Ajay Devgn we’ve always liked — brooding, intense and a knockout in a cop’s uniform. Except that Raid doesn’t have Devgn in uniform. His Amay Patnaik is an unsung hero, an income tax officer of infallible integrity, who drives fear in the hearts of the dishonest every time he lands up to raid their homes.
So honest is Patnaik that he brings his own booze to a party — “Meri jitni aukaat main wahin peeta hoon,” he says — and is transferred 49 times in seven years. His wife Malini (Ileana D’Cruz) is fed up with the constant packing and moving, but is his pillar of support when he takes on the high and mighty at the cost of his own safety. She even lands up with a lunchbox while he’s conducting a raid. That perhaps wouldn’t have happened in the real-life incident that Raid draws its inspiration from. But director Raj Kumar Gupta — the man behind thrillers like Aamir and No One Killed Jessica — gets that out of the way right in the beginning, claiming that his film is “inspired by true incidents, but interspersed with fiction”.
Raid revolves around the supposedly longest income tax raid ever conducted in India. The year is 1981, the setting Lucknow. Tipped off by an unnamed source that the local goon-turned-politician Tauji aka Rameshwar Singh (Saurabh Shukla) has stashed away money and property worth a few hundred crores in his mansion — named “White House” — Patnaik launches a raid, almost blind. Along the way, he has to face a host of impediments — Rameshwar’s clout, political strings being pulled, blackmail and mob fury.
Gupta has an eye for detail — he not only gets the milieu right but also brings on the whistles with some ’80s-styled dialogue-baazi, especially in the face-off scenes between Patnaik and Tauji. Given that it’s a confined space with a definite set of characters, the director and his team — Pink writer Ritesh Shah and editor Bodhaditya Banerjee — keep the viewer riveted for the most part. Raid starts off slow and then picks up pace, with the explosive pre-interval scene setting up a nice Half Two. The film flounders in the last half hour with too much melodrama.
The film works because of Ajay Devgn. The man is in Singham mode — there’s no “Aata majhi satakli” kind of punchline here; his Patnaik is frequently referred to as an “imaandar pagla”. Devgn is on solid ground, his eyes speaking in the scenes where he has few lines and his half-smile saying a lot more.
Patnaik has an able nemesis in Tauji, and Saurabh Shukla delivers a winner of an act. Patnaik’s team — especially Amit Sial playing Lallan — keeps the viewer invested in the film. However, Ileana functions as a mere prop, with the romantic interludes only serving as speedbreakers. Raid has too many songs for a film that aims to be an edge-of-the-seat watch.
A special mention for 85-year-old Pushpa Joshi, playing Tauji’s mother, who has some of the best lines and provides some welcome LOL moments in this serious film.
Raid worked/ didn’t work for me because... Tell t2@abp.in
