Movie Review: Bhoomi

Sorbjit Sarcar just the other day gave you the tale of the Mom fighting the kidnappers . Now its Papa time to handle the rapist who has wronged his daughter. There has been spurge of rape and revenge films in recent times. Listing them out is wholly unnecessary. The fact is that these films do not empathise as much as they exploit the tale. Take the cast of the movie on hand and it carries telltale signs. Bhoomi fails on many fronts and among them is the primary factor that both Sanjay Dutt as the dad and Aditi Rao Hydari as the daughter fail to connect.

The storyline is unipolar. It deals with a town where alcoholic single parent Baba (Sunjay Dutt) dotes on his feisty daughter Bhoomi (Aditi) in the town. He has the local tourist guide (Shekar Suman) for company. The daughter is engaged and is about to get married to Neeraj (Sidhant Gupta- watch the guy dance- that is arguably the one plus point in the film). She gets a proposal from the local sweet meat shop guy Vishal (Puru Chibber- who also needs to take acting lessons) which she promptly rejects. She is drugged, kidnapped and raped with two other guys including the try-hard-to-be bad Dhauli (Sharad Kelkar). Dhauli is bad without purpose. In fact, nobody in the script has any purpose and are all propelled by irrationality. As is the film maker. Every cliched trick in the book is out there for use. We have the apathy stricken police, the ugly neighbour, the tirade-filled lawyer, the calm defence counsel, the bad goon who rapes without cause. So full of hay... so lacking in flesh or finesse…. The Assembly of cardboard cutouts hurts the cause, the art and surely your peace. This film shows that we need to stop exploiting rape as a social evil. There is more cinematic exploitation that empathy for the cause.