Fascinatingly spry and uncompromisingly extravagant

A girl – she was in the wrong place at the wrong time – was dragged from an Agra-bound bus by a group of Chambal brigands and captured. He is in an unconscious state and at the mercy of the hunters. Help is miles away. The lawlessness of the police is conspicuous by their absence.

But this is not Nikhil Nagesh Bhatt’s place wonderfulStreaming starts on Disney+Hotstar. The first thing the impressively spry and uncompromisingly spare film does is the utter barrenness of the landscape, a dry and dusty region with no hiding place for a stricken doe pursued by a pack of hounds.

On a road leading through this unruly expanse where only stunted bushes and wild cactus grow, robbers make off with a cart loaded with expensive wedding ornaments. No one complained to ensure that the jewels that reached Jhansi survived the attack.

Not even the driver and conductor of a passenger bus who insult Jugnu (Rajpal Yadav), the oldest member of the gang, who is at the wheel of a stolen car and drives away relentlessly honking the horn demanding the right to overtake the larger vehicle.

Blocked on his way by a bus driver oblivious to the danger he is facing, Jugnu decides to prove who owns the road. His energy flows from his mouser and he will not let anything get in his way. It’s clear as daylight that his two quarries have nowhere to run when he takes aim.

Jugnoor’s men, Sukha (Abhishek Banerjee), Balli (Sumit Gulati) and Chota (Aditya Gupta), board the bus and on a whim, Apoorva (Tara Sutaria in a raunchy role he has never attempted before) takes off. . She is going to Agra to surprise her fiancé; Siddharth (Patience) on his birthday.

wonderful A mobile call comes from Sid. The attention of the robbers is drawn. They kidnap him. As a harrowing day stretches deep into the night, the girl, confined to the robbers’ hideout, which isn’t really much of a hideout as it’s just an abandoned, robbed goods train coach that doubles as one, fights to ward the grave danger she faces from her captors. Either from that.

Murderous criminals are common to see and hear, but the work they do and the lawless territory in which they operate with impunity is a part of Hindi cinema folklore. wonderful It’s not the kind of dacoit films Mumbai produced in the 1960s and 1970s but it harkens back to a bygone era while narrating a story situated in our time.

reference to wonderful In a recent Hindi film, while Jugnu is busy delivering the wedding jewelery to the man who stole it, Sukha watches a movie with her companions. He describes an actress on screen as Gharelu (housewife), whom he wants to marry.

Cut a DDLJ Murthy that Shukha shakes a little. It ends on the dashboard of Jugnu’s car and a romantic song from an SRK movie plays on the audio system. There is definitely a whiff of romance in the air in this part of the world.

This incongruity is exacerbated by the next song emanating from the car’s music system – Main Nikla Oh Gaddi Leke, Oh Raste Par Oh Sadak Mein Ek Mod Aya. The road is a straight line with no turns but danger lurks at every stretch and in the abandoned villages of the region.

The writer-director, who was recently in the news for his Toronto hit Midnight Madness murder, Demonstrates ability to reduce material to its requirements and avoid any excess. His consciously understated style reflects the uncomfortable sparseness of the site.

To be sure, Bhatt’s script brings out a female protagonist who is exceptional. Not only does she settle for an arranged matrimonial match – in a bit of a twist, she and her family travel from Gwalior to Agra to meet her boyfriend and assess his suitability – she also makes it clear that she’s not interested in premarital sex.

He is an old-fashioned romantic at heart and is as routine as can be in his thinking until a crisis strikes and he has no choice but to fight like a wounded tiger.

There is a lot of blood inside wonderful OK but none of it is actually visible except for the patch on the inside of the car window. All of the physical violence—perpetrated first by the robbers and then by their hapless captor—occurs off-screen.

Someone was beaten to death with the butt of a pistol. Another person was killed by repeated blows from a rusty metal bucket. Another had his head smashed by a boulder. The points of impact are not caught on camera, the blood spatter is left only to the imagination of the audience.

In terms of style, there are many in between wonderful That is admirable. And the elements of the film – a cornered girl fights single-handedly to save herself from physical harm to her fiance; Can find him – creates moments of palpable tension and suspense.

Where the film falls short is the lack of flesh around the bony structure. Its sinuses are thin and weak. A little more crackle can keep the film alive enough.

Rajpal Yadav and Abhishek Banerjee as the four reckless, despite doing their best to enhance the evil effect of their cold-blooded ways, are not the kind of menacing men they are made out to be. They are hated but not much feared. They represent more of a nuisance than a threat.

For Tara Sutaria, who made her debut with Dharma Productions four years ago Student of the year 2, Apurva First direct-to-streaming film. It allows him to do so however And Heropanti 2 Try something behind her and out of her comfort zone. he tries We can say more about trying.

wonderful An out-and-out female-centric film. The lovelorn boy, played quietly by Patience Karwa, sets out to rescue his hobie wife from bandits without the foggiest idea of ​​his upbringing. Amazingly, he arrives at the scene, as the police once did in Bollywood potboilers, when all the screaming stops.

wonderful Only partially taps its potential but it is enough to make the film worth watching.