Udta Punjab: This is no fuddu (loser) film

Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Diljit Dosanjh

Rated: 9/10

Udta Punjab is so crazed, crass and coked up that, like an addict, you just can’t stop watching it. It’s a highly uncomfortable film — stark, dark and real — which grips you like cocaine and makes you dive into the lowest of narco lows and then rise with the highs of the best delivered anti-drug message on Indian screen thus far.

Abhishek Chaubey’s gritty gripper shows up Punjab as all the previous documentation has failed to do despite the State’s more than a two-decade-long plummet into a virtually en masse haze of narcotics, cocktail of injectable chemicals and, of course, trips on prescription drugs. There’s everything to contend with in this film — cross border smuggling, narco-political nexus, the well-oiled rustic cartels, the cleaning up bids, the cuss words, the profanities and, of course, the predicament of the State’s drug-induced population which is reeling at all levels.

Chaubey is so sorted, spot-on and correct in his portrayal of this drug menace that has gripped India’s much deteriorated wheat bowl that it shows up the Censor Board’s chicanery and needless authoritarianism without even lifting a finger. The film and its characters are so real, intense and edgy that the foolishness of CBFC and all the debate it threw up, like a person with motion sickness on a hill drive, comes across as extremely naive and out-of-place.

The fault lines in the film are few and eminently negligible, and the execution of the subject near-perfect. From the word go, Chaubey makes sure that the film lives up to its title and flies, actually takes off, like a rocket in a hurry. And it’s not just about the direction, Udta Punjab’s four principal characters join the race alongside its background scores, the cinematography and, last but not the least, its scriptwriter Sudip Sharma’s deep-ended research into the subject.

Call it Chaubey’s excellence or Sharma’s aptness with the pen, you fail to fault the overdose of cuss words that flow like chemicals in the film. Everything that’s there was needed and in place, all the drama coming not from playing to the gallery but from the starkness of the situation on display.

Unfolding on four main characters far removed from each other and yet sharing an unseen strand, Udta Punjab goes deep into the heartland, all of it starting with Yo Yo Tommy Singh’s coke&cock concert panning into the wanton smackers in nightclubs, rural ruins, homes, farmlands and almost anywhere 22-year-old profane and himself all snorted Tommy Singh’s rock&roll culture reaches.

Shahid Kapoor as Tommy Singh Fuddu (loser) is more than brilliant. With flowing and unkempt locks, high on cocaine, petite, nimble on his feet and almost always on a crescendo that’s about to push him over the edge, he delivers a performance of a lifetime. He is all that’s bad with Punjab, he is also all that’s vulnerable in Punjab and he is the symbol of debauchery and degradation that the drug problem has reduced this State of hockey, athletes, farmers and kingsize life-makers to.

Then there’s Alia Bhatt. As a Bihari district-level hockey player-turned-farmhand who gets sucked into the underbelly of the drug business due to her own failures of life, aspiration of good life and greed, is the spoke that shocks and stuns you the most in this film. Her controlled histrionics, brilliantly underplayed, are a perfect foil to Shahid’s over-the-top highs. She is Punjab’s degradation, and also its light in the tunnel yelling, screaming and shouting that nothing will break her — not the kidnapping, not the beatings, not the induced drugging, not even the mass rapes. She shows up Punjab more starkly than Tommy does. She makes you cringe, she makes you angry and she makes you helpless. She steals Shahid’s thunder from under his locks and is the film’s most powerful anti-drug message.

On the side, Punjab’s filmy superstar, Diljit Dosanj who plays an ASI with the Punjab Police, makes a marvel out of underplaying his role. As a hafta-bound, corrupt policeman, he is as sorted as Chaubey and shows his transformation from corruption to anti-drug activism in a measured way after almost losing his younger brother to drugs.

His interactions with Kareena Kapoor Khan who plays a rehab doctor are fun to be with though their mission to expose the racket is a bit naive.

Kareena may look misplaced and too clean in all the dirt around her, but she plays her part in fleshing up the weak link of the film.

Other than these four, it’s Chaubey’s mind-worth that even as you get shocked, you laugh at many places through meaningful dialogues like a corrupt cop at a naka saying “this (drugs) is Green Revolution 2” or the boys discussing how Punjab might just become like Mexico where cops can’t even enter drug cartel-held areas and then straying inevitably into discussing how Punjabi women have as good butts as Mexican women like JLo do.

The climax is stunning and wrenches your guts out, like the rest of the film. No family drama, but all adults need to see and be with Udta Punjab. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 19 June, 2016