DURGAMATI: THE MYTH (Review by – Jyothi Venkatesh)

Producer– Bhushan Kumar, Vikram Malhotra and Akshay Kumar

Director– G. Ashok

Star Cast– Bhumi Pednekar, Arshad Warsi, Jisshu Sengupta, Karan Kapadia,Mahie Gill, Ananth Mahadevan

Genre– Drama

OTT Platform– Amazon Prime Video

Rating– **

Khoda Pahaad Nikla Chuha!

Minister of Water Resources, Ishwar Prasad (Arshad Warsi), is on CBI’s radar for the mysterious disappearance of several costly antique idols from renowned ancient temples. Jyothi Venkatesh

   IAS officer Chanchal Chauhan (Bhumi Pednekar) is put behind bars for murdering her own boy friend and social activist Shakti Singh (Karan Kapadia) The CBI extra-legally confines Chanchal to a haunted eerie and decrepit haveli in a remote location to extract information from her about her boss Ishwar Prasad, a seemingly incorruptible politician and Chanchal Chauhan’s fate is sealed while Prasad is evading capture.

The original writer-director G. Ashok has cast Bhumi Pednekar in his Hindi remake Durgamati: The Myth, of his Telugu-Tamil bilingual hit Bhaagamathie in which Anushka Shetty had played the lead. The story remains the same; but the location has simply shifted to north India.

The screenplay tosses you from one angle to another in a bid to confuse you as to whether the flick is a horror film or a vendetta film. On one hand, when the CBI’s Satakshi Ganguly (Mahie Gill) questions Chanchal though, the latter reiterates what everyone else says about Ishwar – that he is a genuinely nice guy with innate hatred  for dishonesty. On the other hand, Chanchal gets possessed by the spirit of Queen Durgamati who once resided in the palace where she is now being held by the cops as a captive, without even a female constable

Mahie Gill (Satakshi Ganguly) and Jisshu Sengupta (Abhay Singh), who play the cops, are wasted

While poor Bhumi Pednekar’s considerable talent is wasted in a role that demands little of her and all that we get to see her is screaming at the top of her voice intermittently. She is let down by a ludicrous and uninspiring and what’s more at times totally confusing screenplay and as a result the poor girl who is otherwise talented to the core sticks out like a sore thumb.

Arshad Warsi gets a meatier part and manages to succeed to live up to his track record of brilliance in films like the Munna Bhai series and Jolly LLB. Mahie Gill (Satakshi Ganguly) and Jisshu Sengupta (Abhay Singh), who play the cops, are wasted, though mention ought to be made of Jisshu who has an impish charm of his own even as a  cop.

Ananth Mahadevan in a brief cameo as a psychiatrist is good as usual

 Karan Kapadia has been reduced to a caricature as a loud rebel and looks like he managed to get the role only because he happens to be Akshay Kumar’s wife Twinkle’s cousin brother. Ananth Mahadevan in a brief cameo as a psychiatrist is good as usual but I feel that he should not take up such roles since he is a brilliant director on his own right

To sum up the film on the whole, all that I can say is that the writing is so bland, the editing so uninspired, the clumsy narrative so stretched and the lop-sided style so unexciting that there is hardly any surprise for the poor viewer is surprising enough to evoke interest. And not a single song excites you and with duration of over two and a half hours, the film also bores you intermittently