Review: Department - a third degree torture

Hyderabad: Beware: RGV is at it again. The messiah of dark cinema is out again shooting gangsters and parading familiar faces in a heady mix with the unknown using the cuss word as if it were part of our regular grammar.

Suddenly in the last few weeks we have had film after film using abusive language as a fashion statement.

Why RGV, why? Why this cinema? The content is so, so bitter and surely purposeless. It is not Kafkaesque, not an outsider's protest. It is almost celebration a la Karan Johar, only it is spewing anger, venom and peace smashing.

It is the same tale of gang wars and how shootouts in broad daylight rules cities in India. It is about the clich'd connect between the law and the law breaker. It is nauseatingly repetitive about guns, shootouts and vulgarity in display to a tiring over kill.

The film starts with Inspector Shiv Narayan (Rana Daggubati) going berserk in the name of law and with a textual caveat quoting Lord Atkins who said: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Though he is suspended, he is quickly recruited by another senior colleague Inspector Mahadev Bhonsle (Sanjay Dutt) who runs the 'Department' in a fight against gang wars. This is justification; in fact license to kill indiscriminately.

This makes neither social nor cinematic sense. It is excuse for a storyless script dedicated purely to guns, splintering glasses, broken cameras, camera wandering in tea cups, mouthing stale statements about the anachronisms including one on doing legal things illegally and vice versa.

The 'Department' is out to put to end the gang war between Ghori and Sawatya (Vijay Raaz). Now, Sawatya has lieutenants like DK (Abhimanyu Singh - in the worst screen presence of his life) and his girlfriend (Madhu Shalini) always fanning revolt.

As the story goes along, the filmmaker thinks there is just enough space for one more character in place of the thousand odd guys who have fallen literally by the road side, and introduces Sarje Rao Gaikwad (Amitabh). This time round, the Sarkar get up is on, the punch off.

Sarje Rao is a gang leader-turned-politician. You are supposed to guess if the cheetah has out grown its spots. Shiv Narayan is organising shootouts as if they were daily stories in the media or he is in the line of catering business.

In the meanwhile, he finds time to romance Bharati (Anjana Sukhani - who for some strange reason behaves as if she is a leftover of Juhi Chawla).

Mahadev takes Shiv under his guidance and soon Bhabi Satya (Lakshmi Manchu) also takes the young, loving couple under her care.

However, with no time to spare for anything but mayhem, the script returns with promptitude to killings galore and tires you out of your seats. The RGV camera angles are there for further irritation and to add to the gory experience of viewing.

In a scenario of this kind you lose count and interest on who is on which side and who is dead, who alive. The film is individually trained at helping the industry that produces analgesics and the script singularly designed to welcome Rana to the macho club.

While Rana lacks the punch that would have been good for the role, the rest carry too much of it. Sanjay Dutt is a sleepwalker with a deadpan expression that he carries with the same felicity in a comedy or a thriller. None in the cast have the luxury of behaving like normal human beings.

It is pathetic to watch Bachchan ham his way through the entire script. Soon he could kickstart the debate as to whether he was worse in 'RGV Ki Aag' or 'Department'.

Well, Bachchan has always been a director's product. For years he invested in the likes of Desai and Prakash Mehra, now he does the same with filmmakers (?) like RGV.

'Department' is a stay away film. It is signature RGV stuff. Even for the genre committed it is getting too loud, predictable and avoidable.