Raveena Tandon has tried her best to drive the film but it is a losing battle
New Delhi:
A boxing analogy might not be out of place in the courtroom drama — it comes from the mouth of a lawyer involved in the legal battle on which the film hinges — but Patna ShuklaStarring Raveena Tandon and streaming on Disney+Hotstar, it doesn’t come anywhere close to generating the energy and intensity one would expect when two punks jump into a ring and start throwing punches at each other.
Patna ShuklaDirected by Vivek Budakoti and produced by Arbaaz Khan, is a well-meaning exercise that could have been done with more gusto. The film makes the right noises about the abuse of political power and the anomalies that surround the higher education system, but it does so in such a tepid manner that all its good intentions fail.
There are an arbitrary number of twists in the laborious play. The revelations, most of which come in a heap in the last quarter of the film, serve the sole purpose of either creating an obstacle in the protagonist’s path or facilitating his chosen course of action.
The film’s title character, Tanvi Shukla (Tandon), attaches her title to the media in the city of Patna where a case lands in her lap and she becomes a minor celebrity as the public roots for her and her low-class client.
Tanvi, who is popular for her culinary skills in the Patna district court, has fought inconsistent cases over the years while balancing her career with her family responsibilities. Her husband, Siddharth Shukla (Manav Viz), is an engineer with the Municipal Water Board. Her only son is suffering from asthma.
To be fair to his life partner, the man is honest about what he thinks about Tanvi’s work as a lawyer. But to humor him, he says that the stroke below his signature is ‘you’. Even my signature is not complete without you, he asserted. These are of course just words. Film is no different. It tries to say a lot but doesn’t get its lines right.
The housewife-lawyer’s public fame comes from her Rinki Kumari (Anushka Kaushik), the daughter of a rickshaw puller, who falls victim to a marksheet scam and her B.Sc. Third year examination. It turns out that the person responsible for the girl’s plight is Raghuveer Singh (Jatin Goswami), son of a powerful politician, who uses his influence to change her marksheet with Rinki.
The fight Tanvi fights, be it in the courtroom or in society, is unequaled. The institution that Rinki sues – it’s called Bihar (not Bihar) University and Patna Shukla is filmed in Bhopal, not Patna – is represented by hotshot lawyer Neelkant Mishra (Chandan Roy Sanyal).
Neelkanth is the glib man who equates legal battles with boxing bouts. By all accounts he is a heavyweight. After choosing someone who is not of his stature, Nireeh Neelkanth is confident that Tanvi has no chance of winning the case.
The politician — accused of using unfair means to acquire the degree required to file nomination papers in the upcoming polls — misses no opportunity to undermine Tanvi’s resolve. He arm-twists her in every way possible but the lady stands her ground as she is determined to ensure justice for Rinki.
Judge Arun Kumar Jha (Satish Kaushik in one of his last roles) is obsessed with balance, as it should be. She respects Neelkanth’s reputation as a lawyer, but stands firm with him when the arrogant defense counsel crosses the line.
Patna ShuklaBudakoti, written by Sameer Arora and Farid Khan, flags an issue of import and shows the struggle to ensure justice to the weakest of the weak. But the storytelling style the film adopts crushes dreams in its quest for seriousness.
The title isn’t the only surprising thing about this film. The choice of Bhopal as a filming location for a story set in Patna is odd, to say the least. It is not Patna Shukla The first Hindi film to surpass Bhopal as a city in Bihar. But those who had done so before – notably some of Prakash Jha’s political thrillers – had a dramatic tendency to revise them for local independence.
As the focus is on the lawyer played by Tandon, the wronged girl is reduced to a side player. This significantly reduces the impact of the film’s central theme. Anushka Kaushik, played by actress Rinki Kumari, is an accomplished screen performer (viewers may remember her for her roles in Disney+Hotstar’s Ghar Wapsi and Prime Video’s Crash Course). He deserved much bigger drama for the story’s sake.
Rinki’s pitiful financial condition is repeatedly emphasized and hence his complete lack of social power. But the film couldn’t muster up the courage to mention his caste. That is, other choices are much better Patna Shukla creates, undermines its purpose. Factoring the racial discrimination angle into the legal drama would have made the film more eloquently.
The simplistic approach, which suddenly and laboriously revolves around undefined truths, is sometimes disturbingly anodyne. They undermine several earnest performances.
Raveena Tandon does her best to pull the film out of its stupor but it’s a losing battle. Despite his tremendous support from actors led by the late Satish Kaushik, whose brilliantly acclaimed performance shows why his untimely passing is such a loss to Hindi cinema.
Chandan Roy Sanyal, Manav Vij and Jatin Goswami do their best to keep the proceedings alive within the constraints imposed on them by the script.
To finish, here’s another boxing analogy. This is much more appropriate than the one quoted earlier in this review. Neelkant Mishra tells his client, Bihar University Vice-Chancellor Harsh Sinha (the late Rio Kapadia) about the existence of something called a “walkout bout”. He said it refers to a contest between unsuspecting boxers scheduled after the main event. It triggered a walkout from the field.
Patna ShuklaIt’s the cinematic equivalent of a walkout bout, with all the seriousness it raises, no matter how hard it tries. It’s too stiff and starchy to be a meaningful call to action.
