- 1) Are there are two named men in the film?
- 2) Have at least 10 female characters kicked the teeth out of the male villain?
- 3) Have at least one of these women held forth for over 10 mins in a strangely prescient, human-rights inflected way about the predicament of being a women?
Needless to say, the film passes these new rules.
Mardaani’s biggest problem though is a complete lack of balance. Everything is extreme.
- Here is a list of the film’s most glaring imbalances:
- 1) All the hero-style one liners (mostly unfunny) > Believable interiority
- 2) A soul-killing yamaha synthesizer soundtrack > Moments of actual narrative tension
- 3) Portraying women as perpetual victims > Showing them have little, non life-changing triumphs
- 4) A Madhur Bhandarkar black and white moral universe > Genuinely spunky female characters
- 5) An earnest social realist film about sex trafficking > A you-go girl *whistle* *whistle* script with chak de moments
- 6) A female protagonist with a non-stop action life who chronically overcompensates > A woman who might, on occasion, stop and think