The film begins with a flash forward where
the damsel is in the villain’s clutches, the villain’s pointing
a gun at the helpless hero and the hero wonders out aloud how
the tables ever turned on him.
Rewind to a few days earlier and the story is
laid out before us, Abhijit Patil is a cop (Sachiin J Joshi) who
lives by his own rules, from drinking on the job to sleeping
with women to placing illegal bets to staging encounters. He has
got his own posse to help him in his operations and his uncle,
ACP Gaitonde (Mahesh Manjrekar) to watch his back.
One of the defining character traits of
Abhijit is his inability to stand violence against women; this
coupled with his maverick attitude puts him in the bad books of
bar king, Shetty (Prakash Raj). As the story progresses, Abhijit
inadvertently finds himself in the middle of two seemingly
different shooting incidents, one of which takes away the life
of his close friend and colleague. Put in charge to investigate
the case, he defies his principled partner, Inspector Manish
(Prashant Narayanan) to avenge the death of his friend which
subsequently leads to a CBI Enquiry and his suspension from the
police department. It is at this point that Abhijit realizes
that everything is not how it seems and that he was made a
scapegoat to cover up the operations of a covert drug cartel.
What happens next is for the viewer to discover.
Coming to the analysis, the script is the
strong point of the film with well developed characters and well
defined motives. This helps in laying down a good base for the
story and keeps the film from going off the track. The female
characters, however, are underwritten. Nevertheless, it has
some good twists and turns and makes for engaging viewing for
the most part of it.
Coming to the acting, the whole cast has been
utilized brilliantly with Prakash Raj, Prashant Narayanan
and Mahesh Manjrekar standing out for their contribution to
their respective roles. Aditya Pancholi makes the character of
the bookie, Durrani, his own. Sudesh Berry goes just a little
overboard with his CBI Officer act but certainly constructs a
quirky and memorable character.
Debutant Gihana Khan plays the role of the
vamp convincingly and Vimla Raman turns in a decent performance
as the news reporter and the hero’s love interest. As far
as Sachiin J Joshi is concerned, he plays out his nuanced role
earnestly, he could have avoided the once in a while super cop
routine, but kudos to him for enacting a character that beats
but gets beaten up as well.
Now for the technical department, the intro
song choreographed by Chinni and Rekha Prakash is awesome and
the ‘Marjawa’ track by Sonu Niigam stands out among the songs.
While the cinematography ranges from good to average, the
screenplay and editing may pull the film down. With a winner
for a script, a better output from the technical department
would only have contributed to making the film better.
However the team has to be commended for some
compelling sequences, the first being the one leading up to the
interval and the second being the one leading to the finale.
They also deserve kudos for not succumbing to the ‘Dabangg’ or
‘Singham’ syndrome and portraying a more realistic and
believable police department.
Barring some avoidable flashbacks and a few
loose ends, Mumbai Mirror is definitely watchable for its great
script and superb performances. It is 3.5/5 for Mumbai Mirror
for investigating a decaying law enforcement system pushed to
bask in the silent approval of its questionable ways.
