Movie: Maatr
Direction: Ashtar Sayed
Cast: Raveena Tandon, Alisha Khan, Madhur Mittal, Divya Jagdale, Anurag Arora, Rushad Rana, Saleem Khan, Shalee Goel
Music: Utkarsh Umesh Dhotekar
Cinematographer: Hari Vendantam
Editor: Manoj Magarr
Genre: Thriller
Rating: ∗∗½
What is it about: It’s a revenge drama which involves a gang rape victim, and how the victim overcomes the tragedy and avenge what happened to her and her daughter forms the crux of the story directed by Ashtar Sayed.
Why it’s disappointing: Film on this matter and genre are plenty and many have pondered the issue with different angles and this one from Ashtar Sayed one another angle scripted by Michael Pellico. So this factor makes the word CLICHÉ in block letters. But again one can treat a repeated subject, in the most brilliant manner possible. “Maatr” fails at many levels, in spite of a gritty performance by Raveena Tandon.
Writer Michael took quite a liberty in scripting this drama, which deliberately goes looking for pot holes. Few things just come very easy to a Mother who is recovering from the shock of a tragedy, which goes unexplained or established. This transfers the film from being realistic to superlative. It dwells on the masala emotions and fails to ponder the actual emotions which was crying out loud just like how the lead character did for justice in the film.
The film had a very straight forward notion and a strong message to deliver. But the writer and the director were quite lost on reaching a conclusion. It gets suddenly gory, and then stumbles on melodrama and finally falls flat on being a commercial masala film. If at all these factors had been balanced, “Maatr” would have been a great film making a benchmark for Raveena’s career.
What to watch out for: It’s pretty obvious that Raveena steals the show throughout with a stellar performance, her return to the silver screen was a good one, even though the characterization was not justified with requisite elements, she did a commendable job.
Then it was Madhur Mittal, who did a good job followed by Alisha Khan as Tia and then Divya Jagdale as Ritu.
The film had a good cinematography by Hari Vedantam was apt and was swiftly edited by Manoj & Girish. Music by Fuzon was good.
Verdict: Ashtar & Michael, couldn’t do justice to the grave subject they were handling. The writing was pretty off and didn’t cope-up to the intensity it required. You can watch this, for Raveena’s commendable performance.
