The Tashkent files Movie Review.. Prime suspects behind prime minister\’s death.. An exposé??

This being one of my most favourite genre and also an event that has always had an aura of doubt and suspicion around it, was a must watch for me!

The movie begins with a newbie journalist trying to crack a TRP toppling topic to keep herself in the political journalism department that she loves so much. After making desperate efforts and failing at them to find one, she is led into the titular topic. As a side note, the media group that she is shown to be working for has uncanny resemblance to the working style of Bennett Coleman and Company Limited (The Times Group), which can do anything and everything under the sun to stay in the \”news\”.

The movie leaves no stone unturned in bashing the fabricated perception the different social influencers imbibe on the common people. Be it the NGO that wants to always be in the good books of the government, retired bureaucrats and other authorities that want to remain in the news, the biased historians who have shaped our history taught over the decades, the extreme casteist and religion fanatics, the ruling party advocates who go to any length to defend their fiefdoms, journalists with confused loyalties and finally the politicians themselves. It is not often that you see that the majority of the screen time is expended in a single room. On top of it, it is very difficult to keep the interest of the audience intact in such a scenario but this story never falters!! The lighting has been kept dim in the room through out with some flickering lamps, as if to indicate that some light needs to be shed on the topic. The dialogues seemed appropriate and present a different perspective of the same incident. Towards the end, the film stresses the fact that today\’s youth have started taking interest in the the governance, politics and accountability for the people who are representing them. Today\’s youth which comprises about 50% of the country\’s population, is a force to reckon with and and a generation who can shape the country\’s future. Somewhere I got the feel that it is a kind of adoption of the cult classic \’12 Angry Men\’ which presents different versions of the truth.

Shweta Basu Prasad who has done only a couple of films in Bollywood so far, delivers a convincing and believable performance. She expresses angst, anger, fear desperation, energy in equal measures. For me this is Mithun Chakraborty\’s one of the best bollywood performances till date. Naseeruddin Shah is at his villainy best. As much as I disagree with his political stance in real life, I adore the natural free flowing depiction of this characters that he potrays. The other characters including Pankaj Tripathi, Mandira Bedi, Pallavi Joshi pack in a punch too. The movie goes to tell how we have been presented, taught and hammered into our little minds since school, distorted and incomplete versions of our history to suit the needs of some or the other \’Big Brother\’. Writer, producer, director and screenplay mastermind of this film Vivek Agnihotri who has given us offbeat art in the past like \”Buddha in a traffic jam\” has done his job to perfection.

Most of the so called critics have blasted the movie while others have stayed away from reviewing it, because it does not suit their ideologies, and called it propogandist. Whatever the critics might say, you just cannot deny the video comments shown in the film, of the experts and family members and the people who were close to him in political circles.

Do watch this movie and let me know your review in the comments section!