Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, directed by Dibakar Banerjee, opens to a car racing on a highway. Three young men, some laughter, a sexist discussion. When one of them is about to answer a question — why he prefers a plain woman over someone who wears lipstick — the conversational sound is muted by a soft background score. Soon, the dialogues pop again. The men mock a cop (Arjun Kapoor) and overtake his car; there’s a woman (Parineeti Chopra) in the backseat. The music drowns the dialogues again. The camera, near the bonnet, continues to film in a long take. And then, a few cops stop the car and shoot the men dead.
The same scene is then played from the point of view of the aggrieved cop, Pinky. You don’t know what’s happening, but you care. It’s a simple yet clever opener, filled with sly smarts and consistent intrigue. The screenplay (by Varun Grover and Banerjee) soon reveals the first layer. Pinky is a suspended cop. Sandeep, or Sandy (Chopra), is a top-brass executive at Parivartan Bank. Even after masterminding a shady scheme that earned the firm Rs 15,000 crore, she didn’t get a promotion. She blackmails the bank for Rs 50 crore, or else she’ll reveal the secret. Sandeep’s also pregnant — the result of an affair with her boss. She has outlived her utility, and he wants her dead, enlisting the help of an Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officer, Tyagi (Jaideep Ahlawat), who orders Pinky to do the job. Figuring out that Tyagi will kill him too, Pinky leaves the city for Nepal when Sandeep finds him at the train station.
Both Sandeep and Pinky are India’s two compromised facets that rarely intersect. She represents the venality of a corporate monolith, whose bottom-line obsession lures middle-class families to invest in a doomed scheme. Pinky, on the other hand, belongs to a ruthless police machinery that enjoys disturbing impunity, covering the murders of innocent victims by, as Tyagi says, “making them Pakistanis”. Both of them were success stories, exemplars of power and wealth. Now they’re fleeing from their own masters: predators turned preys.
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Other neat inversions mark the film, too, literally beginning from the first word, its title. Sandeep, a masculine name, is a female banker; Pinky, following the same logic, is a man. Traditional gender roles are reversed throughout the film. Sandeep towers over Pinky, as she’s more educated and affluent. Pinky maybe a cop, but it is Sandeep who is more callous — more of a ‘man’. Pinky cares for dancing, subverting his macho designation. Sandeep doesn’t know how to cook; Pinky makes rotis for the family providing them shelter. Even the climax — don’t worry, no spoilers — has Pinky disguising himself as a woman, while Sandeep is wearing a shirt and trousers.
So far, some good: Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is smart in parts. But an impressive film is much more than its spinal thought. Remember the riveting opening segment? With the exception of another later scene — between Sandeep and a bank manager in Pithoragarh (where the eponymous pair hides) — this movie struggles to whip up any intrigue at all. The most obvious culprits are the lead actors. Kapoor, playing a rugged Haryanvi, is quite unconvincing, Chopra only a shade better. Both of them struggle to bring any kind of magnetism, or crucial specificities, to their roles. As a result, they seem inert and flat — throughout — lacking compelling chemistry and individual charm.
Sandeep and Pinky are dull conceptions and hanging out with them soon starts to resemble a chore — like laughing at your drunk uncle’s jokes. This is exacerbated by a flat tone inducing endless tedium. Even when the movie drops flashbacks of Sandeep’s life, implying a refined understanding of the characters and the story, the writing and filmmaking get minimal fillip. Centred on unlikely fugitives, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar suffers from a distinct lack of urgency. More so, the taut pace isn’t discarded in lieu of some nuanced social commentary or complex character portraits. The film continues to plod for long stretches, diluting the levels of immediate and ultimate engagement. A slow film is not a bad film; a boring film is a bad film. This movie is both slow and boring.
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Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is also unable to make up its mind. If it’s a slow burn, then it lacks a simmering intensity. If it’s a meaty political piece, then it doesn’t have enough penetrating insights. If it’s a dark comedy, then it’s neither disturbing nor comical. The lack of humour in fact is its most disappointing flaw. Sandeep and Pinky meet several idiosyncratic characters, but the filmmaking produces nearly nothing of jovial value. I chuckled so rarely that I kept a count (twice). There’s just one notable character played by (the ever reliable) Raghubir Yadav whose portrayal of a benign right-wing man trying hard to talk in English — while championing a dictatorial government (“at least the trains run on time”) and “surgical strike” — is both discomfiting and relevant. The cinematography (by Anil Mehta), informed by sharp pans and some ingenious play of light, provides sporadic pleasures.
Other than that, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is a joyless, drab watch. It is the most underwhelming movie in Banerjee’s filmography. This is worrying as even his last feature, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, despite discrete stylistic flourishes, was middling. But you hope that Banerjee sees through this film and sees himself.