Kadak Singh Movie Review
Kadak Singh deals with AK Shrivastav (Pankaj Tripathi), who is an officer with the Department of Financial Crimes, suffering from retrograde amnesia. He allegedly tried to commit suicide while in office, failed at it and suffers from short term memory loss as a result. He remembers some things, though has forgotten much. He has forgotten that he has a teenage daughter for instance. He doesn't remember his daughter Sakshi (Sanjana Sanghi), when she visits him. He remembers he has a small son (who has now grown up and is in drug rehab). He doesn't remember that his wife has passed away, and that he has a lover, Naina (Jaya Ahsan), who teaches literature. Everyone who comes meet him, be it his junior officer Arjun (Paresh Pahuja) or his boss Tyagi (Dilip Shankar), tried to tell him his or her versions of events which led to his suicide attempt. He tries to sift the truth from the falsehoods, while desperately trying to jog his own memory about it. His companion among all this is the nurse assigned to him, Mimi (Parvathy Thiruvothu), with whom he harmlessly flirts sometimes and who later saves him from an assassination attempt. He's said to be quite strict as a parent and hence his children call him Kadak Singh.
The film, which can be said to be part mystery thriller and part drama, makes use of non-linear narrative, in order to showcase the fact that the protagonist is suffering from a fragmented memory. We're fed the same set of facts, with new information emerging with each retelling, and the real truth soon emerges.
But apart from being a mystery, this film also navigates human relationships. Kadak Singh has been an absent father, married to his job, and has become even more distant after the death of his wife. His daughter has been practically running the house and has been taking care of her younger brother, who has become a drug addict because of depression.
Thanks to him being bedridden, Sakshi vents out her angst to him during her visits. She also knows about his affair. Her meeting with her father's lover in the hospital corridor is one of the most poignant scenes in the film. Bangladeshi actress Jaya Ahsan has outdone herself in her maiden Hindi venture. She's subdued, hesitant, silent in the beginning, but as both women communicate, she becomes an ally to Sakshi in her hour of need. Much is said through eyes, through body language.
Another well-written scene is the post-coital sequence between Kadak Singh and Naina. They talk about having politically incorrect sex and how they can better that. They agree to talk more in advance and indulge in the sex later, in order to have a better relationship. The most powerful scene in the film occurs when Kadak Singh is caught by her daughter in the company of another woman in a shady hotel. She goes full ballistic and he doesn't know how to defend himself.
Barring the emotional as scenes, which are first rate, it's the mystery portion of this drama that jars. The denouement, when it comes, looks too contrived.
The film is held together by the glue of superlative acting. Sanjana Sanghi gets a chance to showcase her acting chops to the fullest and does full justice to her role. She really has grown as an actor with this film. Jaya Ahsan is a well-known name in Bengali films and Hindi viewers would love discovering her after watching her performance in this film. She lends a necessary gravitas to the film. Pankaj Tripathi is one of the best actors of our generation. He excels in every department, whether as a strict parent, as an honest officer or as a befuddled, quirky patient trying to piece together his life.
Watch the film for its human drama and for the brilliant acting displayed by the entire ensemble cast.
Trailer : Kadak Singh
Sreeparna Sengupta, December 8, 2023, 3:31 AM IST
Story: AK Srivastava (Pankaj Tripathi) an officer at the Department of Financial Crimes (DFC) suffers from selective amnesia after a failed suicide attempt. But as he begins to hear different versions of the events leading up to the day of his attempted suicide, he begins to piece together what might have actually happened and unravel the financial scam case he was working on at the time.
Review: 'Kadak Singh' opens with a hint of what might have landed Srivastava at the hospital. All he can remember is his son who he believes is five years old, his wife and a few colleagues. For the rest of the narrative his family, friends and close teammates relate different sides of his life story to help him rejig his memory. As his adult daughter, Sakshi (Sanjana Sanghi) tries to remind him of her existence, she reveals that while Srivastava may have been one of the best officers at DCF, on the personal front his life was in shambles. As a single father, he barely managed to keep cordial relations with Sakshi (Sanjana Sanghi) and his 17-year-old son, Aditya (Varun Buddhadev). His constantly abrasive and sometimes abusive nature at home led his children to give him the nickname 'Kadak Singh'. In Sakshi's version he is an absentee father, an uncooperative husband and even beats up Aditya for secretly smoking at home. In fact, she blames her mother's death on him. And in a coincidental sequence of events, Sakshi who tries to bail Aditya out of a sticky situation owing to his drug addiction, ends up having a confrontation with her father right in the middle of the streets of Kolkata, with his colleagues watching. An event, that his colleagues believe led him to attempt suicide. But Sakshi believes her father is made of sterner stuff, having seen him not break under the most difficult of circumstances. Even her mother's death or his close colleague's suicide, caught in the middle of a financial scam didn't shake him from his line of duty.
Through the rest of the film, Srivastava is presented with three other sides of his story. Arjun (Paresh Pahuja), his trusted aide and mentee, Mr.Tyagi (Dilip Shankar) his boss and Naina (Jaya Ashan), his girlfriend also meet him at the hospital to give him their takes on his life events. And drawing a link between all the four versions is his nurse, Ms. Kannan (Parvathy Thiruvothu), who listens in on every story.
Director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury (whose earlier films like 'Pink' and 'Lost' garnered considerable critical acclaim) tries to bring out different layers in the narrative - Srivastava's failure at being the wholesome family man, his passion for his work that makes him one of the best officers in his team and the ongoing investigation of a major financial scam which seems to implicate him as one of the main accused. And at one point all the layers intersect for the story to come as a whole. Relationships at home and work get re-evaluated.
However, Kadak Singh is no Rashomon. Despite having a compelling premise at hand it fails translate that on screen. The narrative feels overstuffed and the pace is excruciatingly slow. If one were not aware that this is a suspense thriller beforehand, it would be hard to guess the genre till almost forty minutes into the film. Even background score is oddly placid for a thriller. And with a run-time just two hours 'Kadak Singh' still manages to feels like a stretch.
However, the film has to its advantage seasoned actors like Pankaj Tripathi and Parvathy doing what they do best. Tripathi straddles the acutely different notes to his character effortlessly well. Parvathy is understated yet effective. Jaya Ashan makes her presence felt in the limited screen time she has. Sanjana Sanghi has a tough role to pull off and while she does manages to hold her own in some scenes, in a few others she comes across as listless.
The film's momentum picks up in the last half hour as it connects all the dots and Srivastava closes in on the main culprits of the financial scam and the mystery behind his colleague's suicide. But by then one may have already guessed some of the suspects in the game. However, on the whole 'Kadak Singh' does qualify as a decent one-time watch over the weekend.
