The
only thing more infuriating than a film with no redeeming qualities, is a film
that has an interesting concept but wastes its potential. Revolver Rani falls
smack down in the middle of the latter territory. Directed by Sai Kabir with a
ton of honesty but lack of confidence, Revolver Rani renders one singular
thought throughout its runtime — what a frustrating little movie. The film has
the kickass concept and story idea of a gun trotting female daaku in the
badlands of Gwalior. Now instead of using that premise to elevate the film to
something entertaining, Revolver Rani jams, fails to fire and burns its own
hand like a faulty tamancha.
It
has hints of pulp, a dash of slapstick, a helping of noir, some serious drama,
shootouts. But the pulp is not pulpy enough, the comedy is not funny, the
action is lame, and our heroine Rani, played by the wonderful Kangana Ranaut
has nothing to do except overcompensate for the film’s half-baked nature. The
story is straight from the 80’s – Alka Singh aka Revolver Rani is a goonda
political honcho up against a gang of other goonda political honchos who want
to get rid of her. So far so good, and with the flashy graphic novel style
opening credits and the first half hour the film feels quirky fun. The goons
are all good actors (Zakir Hussain and co), and Vir Das (although spectacularly
miscast) shows up as a scummy wannabe actor in a hilarious reality show for
Alka.
At
this point it seems like the film would parody the 80’s. You wait for the pulp
mode to kick in, and the film just screeches to a halt. As was the case with
many other recent Hindi films Revolver Rani instead of parodying the 80’s,
becomes an 80’s film. Sadly Ranaut is just a tanned mélange of her characters
in Queen and Wo Lamhe, and Vir Das spends the entire film sitting around
clueless. After the first hour you’re left wondering why the comedic shooting
and killing has stopped to make way for a domestic drama. By the second half
the film gives up altogether and proceeds to rip off Kill Bill, including the
siren music cue and the close up shots of the eye.
I’m
not sure what the filmmakers were trying to achieve, because if it’s supposed
to be homage it’s not a very good one. And if they’d decided to simply remake
or parody Kill Bill they should have just done it wholeheartedly instead of
tinkering around the edges. The one consistently funny bit in Revolver Rani is
a running gag where an India TV style news reporter (Mishkka Singh) pops up and
passionately covers the events of Alka’s love life. Those segments seem like
they belong in a different movie because they’re so well written and acted.
Nothing in the remainder of the film has any footing or sense of coherence.
Despite Aarti Bajaj’s presence the editing is all over the place, with actors
doing entry-exit, and scenes going on for too long. The rest of the technical
stuff is just as awful, with truly ugly stunt rope special effects and the
music heavily borrowing from The Place Beyond the Pines. It clearly seems like
the film faced some last minute post-production changes and the final product
is a hurried mess.
Revolver
Rani is produced by the same people who made Bullet Raja. It is set in similar
timelines and settings, and has the exact same problems that Raja did. What a
waste of cinematic resources. If both the films had been good we could have
seen an Avengers style crossover film with Raja and Rani. If someone who actually
understands pulp attempts to give it a second shot, I’d gladly watch.
(First published in firstpost)
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