Black Friday

Year: 2007
Country: India
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra, Aditya Srivastava.
Rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

Before I forget, there's a shabby sequence midway through the film where two police constables humiliate a mother and her daughter in front of the father. Such a disturbing scene, thinking of which alone shakes me to the core. Rakesh Maria tells journalists, these animals (the 93 blast suspects) will open their mouth only when their loved ones, especially children, elders and women are humiliated. This immensely powerful picture is filled with such barbaric truth about police investigation. The film almost always manage to tell us both sides without bias and that's what makes it a great movie.

Movie starts with investigation and shows criminal investigation proceedings of India's largest criminal case with accuracy and balance. I can not praise Anurag Kashyap enough for it. It takes a genius like him to depict every sequence with this much care and never losing the track or being biased. Truly commendable. But Kashyap does not stop here. He goes back to the Babri demolition and tries to explore the events those eventually led to the infamous riots and then the blasts. The writer director who crafted everything so brilliantly till almost 75% of the film then goes on to show file footage of a Pakistani minister and affected people thus trying to find a solution or at least to show us the cause of what happened in those communal riots. Now, I'm really not sure whether this is a good thing or not. Firstly, I personally don't like real documented footage used in a feature film. If somebody needs to know about that can read the book by Zaidi. Secondly it takes the attention away from a wonderfully built drama and suddenly becomes heavy-handed. I think, that was unnecessary.
I don't know how sure am I about this comment so probably I should stop but not before heavily recommending this tremendous motion picture by debutant director, an artiste to look for. A must watch.