Film Review: D-Day, a Saga of Revenge

Fear is the strongest emotion which runs through human mind. This emotion has the ability to make someone do what he’d probably not do under a normal circumstance. Fear gets generated against  a place, situation, community or a particular person.  If fear is embodied into a mortal human character then it’s certain that people hate that individual deeply. And, if the situation turns in favour of people then they’d like to take revenge to that particular person.  History is full of such characters who, through their ability of generating terror, have ruled on human mind. Ex: Hitler in Nazi Germany, Mussolini in Fascist Italy, Stalin in Communist Russia or recent face of terror, Al Qaida leader Osama Bin-laden. What is interesting to observe that no matter how much we hate those frightening characters but we remain irresistibly curious to get a glimpse of their guarded life.  That’s the reason even today Man Camp ( Hitler’s biography ) or a book with Osama Bin-Laden’s picture on its cover do not stay for a longer time at book-stall,  because such books find their buyers very quickly. The same observation can be made about the celluloid world too where film makers most of the times successfully manage to captivate their audience for three hours in theatre by telling story of a modern day mafia baron.   

D-Day is one such artistic attempt made by the director, Nikhil Advani. It’s judicious to note that the story may revolve around the character, Goldman (character inspired by Dawood Abraham) but overall objective of storytelling is not at all the depiction of Dawood’s character but it’s to show the never ending struggle between RAW and ISI, the two national intelligence agencies of India and Pakistan. And, the denouement of the film highlights the triumph of the former on the latter by showing the killing of Goldman by Indian agents within the Indian territory.  Like any other film director, Nikhil Advani has tried to exploit the popular Indian nationalist sentiment to its fullest. 

  

The entire drama of blood and bullet gets unfolded in the Pakistani city of Kranchi where Wali Khan (played by Irfaan Khan), an Indian agent is on a secret mission under the direction of Ashwini Rao, Chief of RAW.  The objective of the mission is to trap the most wanted man of India, Goldman (played by Rishi Kapoor).  Goldman lives under close security and supervision of the ISI. In the eyes of the world, Wali Khan leads life of an ordinary married man who by his little earning of barber shop provides happiness to his lovely wife and his little son. Another main character is an ex-army officer, Rudra Pratap (played by Arjun Rampal) who keeps mysterious quietness on his face with eagle like vigilant eyes . The story has a female protagonist in lead role as well, Zoya, a London based explosive expert, played by Huma Qureshi. All these three characters, a little different from each other in their personal life, but are commonly linked by their ultimate mission which was to catch Goldman. Apart from these three main characters, there’re a few secondary characters. One of them who merits our attention is Suraiya, a prostitute ( played by Shruti Hassan) whom Rudra Pratap visits very often.  In that frequent interaction of satisfying each others’ needs they discover a common human side which binds both of them  together till the end of the story. In the end, she has to pay a very heavy price for that brief camaraderie with Rudra Pratap, and gets brutal death at the hands of the nephew of Goldman. 

In the end after all action packed thriller episode, three agents escaping death at every moment, manage to capture Goldman through their joint mission. Though in making the mission successful  Wali Khan has to lose his family and  scarify his life.  The story ends at a very exuberant note where Goldman is very cleverly brought into the Indian side of territory through border area. After being captured, Goldman mocks the Indian judiciary system which kept Azmal Kasab, a militant involved in Mumbai terror attack, for four years in jail before awarding him the capital punishment, then he goes on to say that he would find a way out through the loopholes of lengthy legal procedure of India. Immediately after this, Goldman gets killed after receiving a bullet in his head from Rudra Pratap.  

 The film showcases a true versatile, directorial talent of Nikhil Advani. It is surprising to believe that this genre of film in its realistic covering is coming from Advani who made “Kal Ho Na Ho”, a fascinating, regular, colourful film dealing with triangular love story in 2003. In D-Day, songs and music have not been allowed to do any tampering either with the nature of the characters or with the plot of the film which is very rare to find in a Bollywood movie. The film rests on strong script, powerful cinematography and crafty use of light treatment. Characters have been treated very gently by remaining within the parameter of the script.

One scene that seemed unnecessary was the brutal physical torture, and subsequently killing of Suraiya. Not even that, after slaughtering the girl, the killer, nephew of Goldman, tried to wipe off the blood with the shirt which Rudra Pratap was wearing that time.  And thus, the beloved’s shirt gets stain of blood of his old flame. It seemed Advani wanted Rudra pratap’s character to win extra sympathy from audience. No one could see any demand of the script for inserting that scene. Whatever be the reason in embedding that utterly violent scene, a director should take caution in adding such sequence which offers such sexist display of bloodshed subjected on the body of a woman.

A curious question which may arise in the mind of audience which is that what made Nikhil Advani to pick Rishi Kapoor for the role of Goldman. Many times, it showed that Kapoor did not fit into the character. As we perceive that a devil like character of Dawood’s  stature required a ruthless face, eyes with devoid of sentiments, and accompanied by a robust voice; Kapoor lacked all these components in his personality.  Only by walking with his arms distancing from his waist as a person with great authority supposedly walk in underworld and by putting extra weight to his voice do not make him a cult figure of fear on screen which was desired from a character that he was playing.

Rishi Kapoor should recollect that he’s basically known as “Bobby, Sagar, Chandani and Deewana” boy. Throughout his carrier he played mostly Romeo sort of character who danced with heroin in exotic location of Western Europe. It was not that he only got such kind of roles but it was because he could do only such roles considering his face, voice and acting style.

Advani probably did not want to cast any Tier-1 popular star to play those characters in the film, and to highjack the overall plot of it. That may be the reason he chose to cast actors of secondary commercial value so that the director could have complete grip over the script and liberty to make or mold his film the way he’d like to. This grip is very much evident throughout the film.

Above all, D-Day is a nicely narrated story with considerable amount of gun-play and a tinge of nationalistic sentiment which gets underlined forcefully in the end after Rudra Pratap shoots Goldman in the head, and claims that he’s the face of “new India”.