Neither the bustling city nor the turmoil that it has encountered in the past quarter century or so is brought alive in a way that could add layers to the narrative and make this a meaningful exploration of criminal minds and their depredations.
HASEENA PARKAR SERIAL
Haseena Parkar cuts a wide swathe through some of the darkest chapters of contemporary Indian history - the Babri Masjid demolition, the 1992 Mumbai riots, the March 1993 serial blasts - as also sundry documented shootouts and gang wars in the metropolis, but it does not weave them well enough into the overarching but single-note tale of a woman left behind in a hostile environment to fight bitter battles for survival and turf protection. The lawyers err on the side off hysteria and the magistrate who never yells "order, order" (small mercy) comes across as a taciturn man who prefers to sit back and watch the rigmarole wind its way to its foregone conclusion. The court scenes are purported to be the film's centrepiece but so poorly are they written and executed that they cannot hold the drama together. In the end, the film achieves neither grit nor glory. The drudgery is only aggravated when the director resorts to outmoded, by-the-numbers storytelling that has little to commend itself. In terms of both style and substance, they now reek of musty monotony. Underworld period dramas have anyways outlived their utility. Shraddha Kapoor certainly isn't the only problem with Haseena Parkar.
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He calls her beti, she addresses him as bhai. But it is unable to capture the workings of the brother-sister bond beyond its superficial ramifications. Haseena Parkar traces the rise of Dawood Ibrahim, son of a Mumbai police constable, and underscores the agony his little sister goes through when she sees him being whipped by his furious father for his transgressions. When the effort put into a role by an actor begins to show over and above the rest of the film to the service of which it is deployed, it can only be bad news.
HASEENA PARKAR SKIN
Seeking to convey menace and power via a darkened skin tone, puffed-up cheeks, prosthetic enhancements around her jaw and a gravelly voice, she hisses and growls to no effect, making rather heavy weather of carrying the flimsy film on her shoulders.
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When she delivers her vapid lines, it is hard to tell whether she is biting or chewing. Shraddha Kapoor, for whom this is meant to be a career-altering outing, bites off more than she can chew. The film falls off the deep end in the process. It crafts a morally dodgy portrait of the 'godmother' of Nagpada, Dawood Ibrahim's tough-minded sibling who ran the dreaded mafia don's crime syndicate by proxy in the 1990s and the noughties without ever being brought to book.
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Cast: Shraddha Kapoor, Siddhanth Kapoor, Ankur BhatiaĪ leaden-footed gangster flick that barely skims the surface of the done-to-death Mumbai underworld and the story of its notorious Kaskar clan, Haseena Parkar is bereft of frisson and focus.