REVIEW BAMFAAD

Producer- Anurag Kashyap

Director: Ranjan Chandel

Star Cast- Aditya Rawal, Shalini Pandey, Vijay Varma, Vijay Kumar

Genre- Social

Rating- **

Tepid &Predictable!

Jyothi Venkatesh

A Zee 5 original film, Bamfaad marks the debut of Aditya Rawal, son of the legendary actor Paresh Rawal and Swaroop Sampat. It also stars Jatin Sarna, Vijay Varma and Shalini Pandey (of Arjun Singh fame). Naate (Aditya Rawal) is the son of a Allahabad based politician. Naate strives for his friends to be happy and on the other; he doesn’t hesitate to stand up to the local gangster Jigar Fareedi (Vijay Varma). He falls in love with Neelam (Shalini Panday) who, like in every other formula Hindi film, eventually starts liking him too. Both brave their way through a million odds to be with each other.

Replete with twisted politics, a lot of power play and extreme betrayal, Bamfaad reminds you a lot of Gangs of Wasseypur. While the plot and the characters are interesting, the film is stuck in steep mediocrity, mostly due to a loose narrative.  Aditya Rawal scores in his debut, right down to his diction and body language as the “angry young man” and is stunning and powerful. As the damsel-in-distress Neelam, Shalini Pandey is enigmatic and though her performance is decent, her character is that of a weak woman and she falls flat.  Vijay Varma embodies the spirit of a small-town gangster as Jigar Fareedi and makes for a formidable antagonist to Naate. Jatin Sarna as Zahid plays his shady character to the Tee.

However, on the flip side, Bamfaad loses steam with too many subplots and a fragmented stereo-typed narrative. The songs dilute the intensity of the film and take away the edge somehow. With a few forced situations and dialogues, we are only left with the crumbs of a tepid love story mixed awkwardly with underworld and politics.. Debutante Ranjan Chandel does a decent job at bringing us a gangster love story. The casting is perfect and the actors are easily the best part of this feature. If you are in a mood to watch a romance sprinkled with some tough characters, Bamfaad ends on a rather predictable note and makes for just a decent one-time watch..