Rajesh Pillai’s Traffic, inspired by a true incident, is a pulsating, well-acted thriller that banks more upon human emotion than heroic action for impact.
Rajesh Pillai’s Traffic, inspired by a true incident, is a pulsating, well-acted thriller that banks more upon human emotion than heroic action for impact. This unconventional entertainer is a Hindi remake of Pillai’s 2011 Malayalam hit.
The film takes drama to heighten reality, however, it stays firmly focused on the requirements of the story.
The film lets no extraneous elements seep into the multiple tales that it weaves around a single road mishap that triggers a tragic crisis for two families and a rousing opportunity for a handful of individuals to display life-affirming heroism.
The story revolves around Ramdas Godbole (Manoj Bajpayee), a traffic constable in the Mumbai police, who has a tarnished image. He takes upon himself the responsibility of reaching a donor’s heart from Mumbai to Pune, to save a 12-year old girl’s life, in a bid to redeem himself.
How the lives of several strangers in two cities (Pune and Mumbai) suddenly get intertwined in an emergency situation on June 25, 2008 and how humanity wins over every other human emotion, forms the crux of this two-hour film.
The screenplay is almost flawless and the acting is of an exceptionally high order.
As usual, Manoj Bajpayee the one who stands out in the movie.
But no less impressive are Prosenjit Chatterjee playing the movie star whose daughter is dangling between life and death, Divya Dutta as his distraught wife, and Jimmy Shergill in the role of the joint commissioner of traffic police.
The song by Mithoon and Arijit Singh, “Neki ki raahon pe tu chal”, aptly sums up the message of the film “Traffic”, a remake of the 2011 Malayalam film of the same name.
With Inputs From Agency