Of late,
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the actor single-handedly responsible for giving a face to a small-town everyman of varying degrees of ruthlessness, has been frequently filling in a void experienced by commercial films. These are high-budget star vehicles with very little actual acting quotient, in desperate need of salvaging. And Nawaz is their knight in shining armour. It’s a skill that the actor has mastered in effortless Siddiqui fashion, and has now become a failsafe tactic for mainstream filmmakers. In his latest film, Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, a gory comic-crime thriller set in the hinterlands of Uttar Pradesh, Siddiqui plays the eponymous Babu, a contract killer, whose perfect track record has rendered him a sort of celebrity in the hitman circle. All’s going well for him, until he faces competition in the form of rival upstart hitman Banke (Jatin Goswami), who, as fate would have it, is also his biggest fan. Both the men have been hired to bump off three men. The duo strike a bet; whoever succeeds in murdering the three men first, wins and gets to collect the money for the job. The loser, on the other hand, has to bow out of the profession. Unfortunately for Babu, the stakes in the bet are higher than what he’d imagined, which sets off a series of plot twists that only weaken the film’s overarching intent. Despite being overpowered by traces of Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, this lawless gangster saga that makes a comment on the futility of violence, rides on an engaging premise, firing solely from the able shoulders of Siddiqui, who turns in yet another assured performance that elevates the film a generous few notches higher. It’s a challenge he tackles head on and convincingly wins through his portrayal of a contract killer who kills with pure abandon, even as he shifts personae like a chameleon.
Babu is seen blending in his avatar at several different points, and there are a few scenes that are enlivened by his little actorly touches.
Image Credit / Movies By The Mob KNKSPL, YouTube
This is also not the first time this year that Siddiqui has had to rescue an uneven script, or overshadow mediocre performances.In a quietly hilarious scene at the beginning of the film, Babu lays his eyes on Phulwa (Bidita Bag) for the first time. She, a cobbler, is dedicatedly fixing a sandal, and Babu, who by then has already been taken by her, is determined to damage his sandals so that he gets an opportunity to make her notice him. The dialogue-less scene lasts for a few minutes, and sees Siddiqui first using his feet and then swinging across a grill clumsily, to break his almost-new footwear before ending up lying on the road to retrieve his sandal after having dropped it in a drain. As he succeeds in his mission, this one ordinary scene, so out-of-character for a ruthless killer, achieves a kind of endearing poignancy that only a gifted actor like Siddiqui can bring to the table. This is also not the first time this year that Siddiqui has had to rescue an uneven script, or overshadow mediocre performances; Babumoshai Bandookbaaz is in fact the fourth instance of him doing so. In Rahul Dholakia’s Raees that released in January this year, Siddiqui’s earnest turn as JA Majumdar, the honest police officer committed to end the illegal liquor trade, was powerful enough to take the limelight away from none other than King Khan, who was playing a larger-than-life Gujarati bootlegger. In the film, Siddiqui’s incorruptible cop is the antithesis to SRK’s Raees, who is a criminal with a heart of gold, and it is him who shines the most. The actor’s dry, wry punchlines, and his calculated acting have a sort of credence that SRK faltered in bringing out, despite being the leading man. It’s no surprise then, that Siddiqui’s entry scene in the film comprises as much style as SRK’s himself.
With Siddiqui in the picture, there is almost always a tendency to engage a bit further with the film, rather than dismissing it outright.
Image Credit / Movies By The Mob KNKSPL, YouTube
