Assi

Assi Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Kani Kusruti, Revathi, Kumud Mishra, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub

Director: Anubhav Sinha

What’s Good: Kani Kusruti and Advik Jaiswal

What’s Bad: Finally, the pointlessness of the script

Loo Break: Off and on

Watch or Not?: Your call!

Language: Hindi

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 133 Minutes

User Rating:

In Delhi, a schoolteacher, Parima (Kani Kusruti), is raped one night by multiple reckless youngsters in a car. She is then dumped on the railway tracks and left to die, but survives. Her husband, Vinay (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) and son (Advik Jaiswal) also become victims in the psychological sense. Enter Raavi (Taapsee Pannu), the fierce and feisty lawyer who takes up her case.

The uphill battle begins when the cops enter the picture, led by Sanjay (Jatin Goswami), honest at heart yet a shade ambiguous and ‘practical’. Raavi stumbles upon old acquaintance Kartik (Kumud Mishra), who has had a traumatic past of his own.

The cops, through CC footage, nab the culprits early on, but Parima, complete with a temporarily compromised eyesight due to the physical trauma, cannot confirm their identities or even their voices in an identity parade. Social apathy blended with stigma, legal constraints for the judge, a ruthless defense lawyer and utter frustration for the victim and her family, all build up a scathing picture in Assi of the reality of rape and its social and legal consequences.

Assi Movie Review: Script Analysis

Written by Gaurav Solanki and Anubhav Sinha, the script tries to cram everything into a cocktail that works in part, is needlessly convoluted and lengthened, and finally is graphically inconsistent in the rest. A red slide, which comes every 20 minutes (based on statistics that one rape happens within India in that period), is intended to awaken our conscience. But it is still a distraction when a written sentence (like a subtitle) could have worked better in any scene.

The way the rape victim is portrayed after the ordeal, and how she grows out of the ‘societal shame’, with suppressed anger, helplessness and sheer desolation deeply etched into her psyche, is the high point of this otherwise meandering script. Parima’s ability to maintain a sense of justice and hope for her own future, and to nurture her silent, steadfast love and affection for her husband and child, elevates the script in multiple sequences.

On the courtroom side, there are undoubted highs, especially whenever the conscientious female judge (Revathy) is torn between the moral and the legal aspects and has to unavoidably give weightage to the latter. But as with most midstream filmmakers, Anubhav’s desire to be hatke, real and ‘commercial’ all at once (showcasing the inevitable confusion) leads to too much of everything. We even have a vigilante angle thrown in, and that too distracts from the seriousness and ominousness of the subject.

And schoolchildren coming in during the courtroom climax is again meant for a ‘noble’ purpose, but ends up as an unpalatable sequence that should have been axed. The rape sequence is so well-done in effect that one cringes at the sadism and unbridled lust and devil-may-care attitude of the offenders: very few such depictions, done with tasteful restraint yet starkness, have been so effectively chilling. Full marks and more to writers Anubhav Sinha and Gaurav Solanki for the concept and execution. But the follow-up needed a more effective and—I will dare say it!—viewer-gratifying conclusion rather than the pointless way in which the film ends. The intensity of the offence and the repulsion it audiovisually creates should have been cinematically matched and balanced.

The dialogues are razor sharp. And while one understands the helplessness and the rock-solid faithfulness of the grieving husband, a powerful actor like Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub still comes across, overall and unintentionally, as a man largely unaffected by the circumstances in the way he is made to behave, look and speak!

Assi Movie Review: Star Performance

It is thus the child actor, Advik Jaiswal, whose puzzled innocence and natural naivete hit hard. His expressions, reactions, and questions deserve an award, all the more so given his age. The ever-bankable Kani Kusruti also puts in a fantastic performance. The way she is going (Killer Soup, Poacher, the Maharani franchise, and from what I have heard, All We Imagine as Light), she will soon grow to be a rare one-woman institution in acting!

Taapsee Pannu gets a strong character, but her acting shows little variation from what she did in Mulk (under the same director and as an advocate in court again), when she could have shown (or been persuaded to by the writing) some newness and variety. Her outburst, even in the climax, is quite stereotyped for her. I liked Jatin Goswami as the cop and Manoj Pahwa’s brief character trajectory, but Kumud Mishra’s work is the weakest I have ever seen from him. The key point is that it is not his fault, but that of the writing and the character.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub mostly scores, on the other hand, despite the flawed writing mentioned above. The actors portraying the rapists are routine without any standout turns. Satyajit Sharma, as the defense attorney, is correctly ruthless. Revathi, as the judge, is okay. The cameos (Naseeruddin Shah, Seema Pahwa, Supriya Pathak) are all without any impact.