Ajay Devgn with Viacom 18 has produced his first Marathi film by the name of ‘Aapla Manus’ with Nana Patekar in the lead role of Crime Branch officer. Nana is one of those stereotypical tough officer of law, who is usually know it all and does not listen to anyone. Film also stars Sumit Raghavan who is a lawyer and Nana is investigating a suicide case. When it comes to detective storytelling a suicide case is the least interesting as whatever the story might be there is literally only 2 possibilities. Either the lady commit suicide because of so and so reason or somebody might have killed her.
Nana’s character is so oblique in it’s characterization that there is literally nothing exciting about it. Visually this film will be one of the most non-compelling ones because it is shot like Indian soap operas with block close up shots and one kind of lighting for character and the background. Teaser does not show much of the plot but has Nana giving flat out mass dialogues as if he is Rajinikanth except that he seems to be a character close to reality hence the dialoguebaazi every third second is not suiting him.
Nana is certainly one of the most prolific actors of all time but his character itself is so hollow and one dimensional that one could imagine the pattern of performance in rest of the film. Sumit Raghavan’s character is criminally undermined to uplift character aura of Nana, which is a sad thing to do. Any audience would like a film where there is more than one strong character instead of just one cliched. This film is not arthouse by any standard of measurement hence Devgn did not turn to Marathi cinema for merely credibility but profits as well by expanding his reach of commercial cinema. Aapla Manus will release on 9 February.
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