Laal Rang: For Hooda buffs

Cast: Randeep Hooda, Pia Bajpai, Akshay Oberoi, Meenakshi Dixit, Rajneesh Duggal

Rated: 5/10

Blood theft is a serious, a life taking crime; an issue that needed serious, no-nonsense display. Laal Rang could have done that  brought on the big screen the dark crime that is being committed all across the nation as patient after patient becomes victim to non-availability of blood, or worse still, infected blood bought in the black market for huge sums.

But Laal Rang, sadly, almost frustratingly, gets waylaid by Randeep Hooda’s somewhat rippling muscles in gaudily printed vests, his alcoholic haze, his unkemptness, his failed love affair and his strange but real-time affability.

Laal Rang is not an issue-based movie, though one fervently wishes it were. It is out and out a Hooda worshippers though one will have to admit that Randeep lives up to star as the only bright spot of a film that loses direction after splashes of brilliance in showing up the underbelly of this dastardly crime flourishing on the muscle of faceless cartels in the backlanes of Haryana, particularly Karnal.

Hooda on the bike; Hooda with that rustic Haryanvi swagger which he has made his signature tune; Hooda as a real time friend, even a philosopher and guide in an unkempt, somewhat evil, somewhat positive mould. Yes, it is a confusing personality but the real-life Haryanvi Jat scripts the shades of grey with gifted seasoning.

For Hooda buffs, this one is to go for. For meaningful cinema, well, as I said, that gets waylaid pretty soon in the film despite director Syed Ahmad Afzal’s attempt to intersperse some lal rang in the storyline. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 24 April, 2016