Movie Review

Department

A Twisted Political Thriller
Ramu has done it again! Another film, another half-fried headless chicken, another bomb at the box office. The film reeks of Ram Gopal Verma.  In his defence, the best we can do is quote him from his own open letter on the movie that he tweeted about: “I attempted to package (a realistic story) in a never before seen visual style and some people got it and some didn’t.” Count us in on the latter.

Telugu star Rana Daggubati (Shiv Narayan) – now increasingly at home in Mumbai –plays a young, brave and honest cop who is lost in the murky world of the Indian political spectrum. His loyalties are divided between his ‘boss’ Mahadev Bhosale (Sanjay Dutt) and his ‘guru’, gangster-turned-politician Sarjerao Gaikwad (Amitabh Bachchan). The Government sanctions a special Department to wipe out the underworld from Mumbai. Precocious novice, Shiv, soon realises that the Department is actually a twisted survivor-takes-all rat race, where each one’s on his own.

With a bit more vision and less hideous camera effects, the film would have had a fair shot at being a genuine box-office contender. But too much pulp and predictable climax make it a no-brainer. A must only if you dig RGV. 
Aakanksha Malhotra
 

The Raven
A whodunit, squared.
Edgar Allan Poe, the creator of the iconic detective C. Auguste Dupin (precursor to Sherlock Holmes) died in mysterious circumstances. Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore delirious, “in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance”, according to Joseph W. Walker, the man who found him. He died in a hospital four days later.

The Raven tries to explain Poe’s death with elements commonly found in serial killer thrillers, even though the elements could have been stitched together better. If you expect the historical Poe, brash and brilliant, you are likely to be disappointed as the Poe in the film is more melodramatic and less moody.

The opening scenes of the film has Poe, played by John Cusack, sitting on a Baltimore park bench, beneath a tree limb holding a large, vindictive raven. In the next scene, Poe is bursting into a tavern and expecting to drink on credit. For a man who created Dupin, rationality should have carried a little more weight.

Director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) pulls us in with the period atmosphere. The film also presents the fascinating idea: what if Poe, instead of dying a lunatic, had in fact spent the last days of his life trying to nab a serial killer who'd been using macabre ideas from Poe's short stories to murder his victims?

Ishan Raychaudhuri