On this last Weekend Blog post of year 2019, I am writing about the 5 top Bollywood films released during this year, which in my opinion were the best films of 2019. Please note that I have listed the films in random order :
1 BADLA It is a thriller/mystery film directed by Sujoy Ghosh. This film is an official adaptation of 2017 Spanish film The Invisible Guest. The basic story follows an interview between a Lawyer and a business woman, in which she insists that she is being wrongly framed for the murder .
Naina Sethi, played by Taapsee Pannu is a young and shrewd business woman with a perfect family. When she gets arrested for the murder of her secret lover, her lawyer friend Jimmy (Manav Kaul) hires a prestigious defence advocate Badal Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) to defend her. Over the interview with Badal , Naina tells her she was being blackmailed and when she goes to one winter resort to meet the blackmailer she finds her lover’s body in that hotel room. On being probed further she admits that when she and her lover were coming back from their secret rendezvous, their car met with the accident with other car which was driven by a young boy and who gets killed.
Rest of the story is about the further probe by Badal Gupta, and in the climax when the truth comes out, you are really taken by surprise. The film was really an edge of the seat suspense thriller, and the director succeeded in keeping the film very taut. Amitabh Bachchan as usual was really superb, but it was Taapsee Pannu’s acting which was truly fantastic and she matched Amitabh Bachchan in each and every scene. Amrita Singh as the mother of the boy who gets killed in car accident also acted well.
A film made on Rs 20 Cr budget, did the business of Rs 140 Cr was creditable.
2 URI: The Surgical Strike– The film is dramatised account of the retaliation to the 2016 Uri attack. On 19th Sept 2016, four heavily armed militants attack the brigade headquarters at Uri (J&K), killing 19 soldiers in deep sleep. The terrorists are killed, also killed was Major Karan Kashyap (Mohit Rana), who is the husband of Major Vihaan Singh’s (Vicky Kaushal) sister Neha (Manasi Parekh). After some time Indian govt decides to take the revenge by attacking terrorist’s hiding place near LOC, inside the Pakistan territory. Major Vihaan is asked to lead this mission, and rest of the .film is about how Vihaan’s team goes inside the Pakistan territory and destroy the terrorist hiding place and kill many terrorist. This was an action packed thriller, and filmed very well. All credit goes to the debutant director Aditya Dhar. Visky Kaushal really lived the role of Major Vihaan and film also had a fine acting by Paresh Rawal (as national Security Advisor), Yami Gautam (as Intelligence agent), Kirti Kulhari ( as air force pilot) who pilots the helicopter in which Vihaan and his team travel for surgical strike. The film produced at the cost of about Rs 25/30 Cr did an approx business of Rs 340 Cr.
As the film was censored in Dec 2019, it was eligible for the National Awards for the films released in year 2018. The film won national Awards for Best dDrector (Adiya Dhar) and Best Actor(Vicky Kaushal) and two technical awards.
3 Section 375 The film’s title is in fact pertains to Section 375 of IPC , also known as Marzi Ya Zabardasti. The story is about the famous film director Rohan Khurana (Rahul Bhatt) is arrested and convicted by a Sessions Court after assistant costume Designer Anjali accuses him of rape. In the High Court Senior Criminal Lawyer Tarun Salija (Akshaye Khanna) works hard to punch holes in the accuser’s claims, while Hiral Gandhi (Rischa Chadda) who was once Saluja’s assistant , serves as the prosecutor and defence barrister of the victim.
Tarun Saluja points out that the law does not regard consensual physical relations as rape. Hiral Gandhi refuses to call it anything but rape, demanding justice to be served. Tarun Saluja states that Law is a fact, Justice is abstract. The case disputes the legal provisions of the penal code 375 that defines conditions under which a sexual offense can be defined as rape. Meanwhile the society wants Rohan Khurana to be hanged, despite not knowing the entire incident. Finally Rohan Khurana is sentenced to 10 years in prison, but it is later realised that sex was consensual and Anjali Dangle has been deceitful, thus no justice was served and Hiral Gandhi realizes that she did not fight for justice. In the end, Tarun Saluja says to Hiral Gandhi that they are in the business of law and not justice. The moral of the story is that law serves either as a profession or vengeance, not as a tool to get justice nowadays.
Wonderful acting by Akshaye Khanna & Richa Chadda. Manish Gupta as a director handled the courtroom scenes very well.
4 BALA This is a Social Problem comedy film, about a young man suffering from premature baldness. The story is about the lack of confidence and social pressure that comes with premature balding. Bala (Ayushmann Khurana is young man with premature balding problem, this problem leads to loss of self confidence. He starts wearing wig and falls in love with budding model Pari (Yami Gautam). From the childhood he confides in dark skinned girl Latika (Bhumi Pednekar) who likes him but he never respond to her because she is dark skinned. Pari and Bala gets married, before marriage Bala sends her text message about his baldness, but she did not see that message. When she finds the fact afterwards she wants marriage to be annulled.
Litika whose marriage proposal gets rejected because she is dark skinned, where as her Face Book profile, which was made by Bala, shows her as fair skinned. Litika, who is lawyer handles Bala’s divorce case. In this period Bala starts liking her. Bala who is in marketing, during a fair cream promotion realises the beauty is just skin deep and he publicly sheds his wig, and rushes to Litika, but only to find out her marriage is fixed. In the end Bala is now at peace with his baldness.
The social problem theme is well handled by director, and wonderful acting by principal cast. Made on a budget of Rs 27 Cr, thee film did a business of Rs 172 Cr.
5 Mission Mangal– A film based on India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, which was thought to impossible mission by most of ISRO scientists, due to its low budget. The film’s story loosely based on actual events is- for small mistake by Tara Shinde (Vidya Balan) during a satellite launch , which ends in failure, her senior scientist Rakesh Dhawan (Akshay Kumar) takes the blame. Therefore as a punishment Rakesh is assigned the Mars mission, Tara is part of his team.
When they ask for experts in their teams, they are assigned some junior scientists & engineers. First there is Eka Gandhi (Sonakshi Sinha), a propulsion control expert, who is trying for job in NASA (USA), next is Neha Siddiqui (Kirti Kulhari) spacecraft autonomy designer, navigation expert Krittika Agarwal (Taapsee Pannu), Varsha Pillai (Nithya Menon) the satellite designer, Parmeshwar Joshi (Sharman Joshi) payload expert and lastly Ananth Iyengar (HG Dattatreya) the structural engineer.
The film is how this under rated team under the leadership of Rakesh Dhawan, after facing many obstacles on their way, make this Mars Orbiter Mission a great success
The director Jagan Shakti, really made the film with fast narration without affecting the main theme of the film. All the members of ensemble cast performed very well. Made on the budget of Rs 32 Cr, film did a business of approx Rs 295 Cr.
So friends, in my opinion these were the top 5 films of this year. I hope you will like my selection.
Awaiting your views/comments/feed backs.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
27th Dec 2019.