Raid review: It engages you BEAUTIFULLY!

Movie: Raid

Cast: Ileana D’Cruz, Saurabh Shukla, Ajay Devgn, Gayathri Iyer, Ajay Singh

Director: Raj Kumar Gupta

Producers: T-Series/Panorama Motion Pictures

Music Directors: Amit Trivedi and Tanishk Bagchi

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Off late, at the risk of sounding like a judgemental person, not many films have reportedly been able to capture the Emergency Situation of the 70’s and 80’s in an apt way. But, for a change, it looks like Ajay Devgn’s upcoming film, Raid, has got that bit spot-on. Maybe, it might have to do with the fact that it is inspired by true events, so the attention to detail was greater, but, we can’t say for sure. But this looks like a promising film as far as the setup is concerned. So, without any further ado, let’s give you our take on it.

In the first half, Ajay Devgn, as Abhay Pattnaik is what you’d call an idealistic cop. A man who, upon his new transfer, is hell-bent upon going after one of Uttar Pradesh’s most corrupt politician, Rameshwar Singh aka Tauji (Saurabh Shukla), after investigating enough to come to a conclusion that there is unaccounted income in the house. What drives this portion of the film is basically a leap of faith coupled with a cop’s conviction that leads him to a successful recovery of unaccounted cash and assets, (but, only a tiny percentage so far), while sending Tauji away, challenging him to wreak as much havoc as possible.

The film, which is based on true events, may not suffer from the logical flaws that one can cause if one is completely inventing a world on their own, but what it is suffering from is a poor editing job and the ineffective dialogue delivery at places. The film so far is slick as far as the raid execution aspect of it all is concerned. What really has driven this flick so far though is Devgn in his patented cop avatar, well, of course, minus the Aata Maaji Satakli. Then, there comes Saurabh Shukla, who is a legend in every possible way. He is clearly the guy who has entered his character, and that too pretty honestly. Ileana D’Cruz, on the other hand, has clearly proven herself as an actress in this film, a big change from Baadshaho, but she was in all of three scenes and the musical numbers. Her potential was clear, but it was just sad to not see it utilized.

Talking about the second half of this flick, we will not reveal a lot but all we will say is that one thing leads to another, but, it obviously ends on a happy note. Here, although there are scenic shots of the house that is being raided and there are very humorous and refreshing banters between the female supporting cast members, the editing and dialogues at places still remember flimsy. Here, Ileana again just gets to act in all but one scene, and admittedly, she nails it. But, apart from Devgn’s on-point heroic avatar and seemingly perfect details in the investigation aspect of it all, the portion post the interval belongs to Saurabh Shukla, who gets to shine and dazzle just as much as Ajay,for he gets the best of lines and the situational humour elements, especially in a scene where he ends up exposing himself. If there’s a film that is based on the subject that is even remotely similar to Raid, you can expect a lot if social commentary, but the challenge was to make sure that the audience doesn’t see it coming. For handling the writing part of it in such a beautiful way, writer Ritesh Shah gets full credit.

Keeping the technical glitches aside, as it may not affect many, this film is definitely worth a watch, because Raid in itself is an outlier from most of the films that have been made off late.