The period crime drama Raid, directed by Raj Kumar Gupta, is centered on the conflict between an honest income tax officer, Amay (Ajay Devgn), and a corrupt politician, Rameshwar (Saurabh Shukla). Note the words ‘honest’ and ‘corrupt’ — the filmmaker is fixated on them — and their echoes control and dictate the rest of the film. In Gupta’s world, the characters aren’t complex individuals; they’re showcases for adjectives that simplistically slot them.
Early in the film, nearly everything about Amay indicates, or rather screams, ‘honest’. He’s denied entry to an upscale club in Lucknow because he’s not wearing shoes. Amay is only mildly dejected, but since he’s played by Devgn (Akshay Kumar minus the overt BJP love), he lectures the manager about the needless colonial practice, invokes Mahatma Gandhi, and starts to leave. The host finds out and buys him a pair of shoes. But Amay, Raja Harishchandra in aviators, has to make a big deal out of it. He insists on paying for the pair because an honest “officer can’t accept gifts”. Then when everyone is drinking the alcohol served at the party, Amay opens his bottle of country liquor because, in the words of this Honest Officer, “I’ll only drink what I can afford.” Cute.
There’s more. In a career of seven years, Amay’s been transferred 49 times. He’s an atheist who only believes in “Bharat Mata”. (Of course.) Raid belongs to that subgenre of purportedly realistic Bollywood films where characters talk solely to illuminate themes, stories, or the hero’s defining characteristic. Amay isn’t real; he’s a template conceived by a screenwriter who couldn’t care for basic research. In fact, Amay’s sanctimony is ripe for a drinking game. Down a shot whenever Amay’s honesty is referenced — guaranteed inebriation in 15 minutes. What’s better (or worse)? Even then, the film’s plot, like its central character, devoid of complexity or intrigue, won’t elude you.
An anonymous tipoff sends Amay, and his officers, to Sitagarh, a hamlet in Uttar Pradesh, home to Rameshwar, who is suspected of hiding Rs 420 crore (‘420’, get it? Yes, it’s that kind of a film). If Amay is (excessively) good, then Rameshwar is, well, just bad. In fact, not just bad, he’s crass and corrupt and manipulating and murderous — the whole package. Then there are other stock characters, such as the disinterested and venal officer Lalan Sudhir (Amit Sial) who gets transformed by the end of the film; Amay’s wife, Nita (Ileana D’Cruz), who repeatedly reminds the audiences how virtuous her husband is; Rameshwar’s family members who, cast in the roles of black money hoarders, reinforce the stereotypes of people corrupted by easy and undeserved access to money.
If Raid’s characters are opaque and the story hackneyed — the hero encounters a problem; the hero solves the problem — then it could have been salvaged by the micro details of the plot, revolving around the mechanics of the Indian Revenue Service. But the film disappoints on that front, too. Barring some scenes where Amay’s ingenuity in carrying out the raid, extracting cash and assets hidden in the most unexpected places, lead to a few moments of humour and suspense, there’s little else that commands your attention. Even the big twist at the end — the identity of the anonymous informer — materialises through a clunky flashback and information dump, showing how little thought was invested in the making of this film.
The story is also kept afloat by a bizarre plot turn. Amay tells Rameshwar that during the duration of the raid, no one will be allowed to step outside the house. Yet he allows Rameshwar to leave the city, who goes to Delhi and requests the finance minister and prime minister to stop the raid. Their phone calls to Amay are a source of much tension, almost derailing the raid, but they make little sense because someone like Amay, a sensible ‘honest’ cop, wouldn’t have allowed that crisis to begin with.
But the most disappointing bit about Raid is not its incompetency in filmmaking and writing and acting, which is so consistent that you get used to it — it is the film’s empty moral posturing, reducing everything to black and white, advancing a vision for social change through sweeping generalisation. (“The real cause of this country’s poverty is corrupt people like you,” Amay tells Rameshwar at one point).
And then there’s endless sanctimony. My favourite is from a scene that comes towards the end of the film, where Amay asks Rameshwar, “You know what I asked from my wife when I got married?” “Couldn’t have been dowry,” Rameshwar smirks. Amay doesn’t bat an eyelid and takes a lifetime to reply: “Courage.”
The schoolbooks of moral science are more interesting.