Mumbai Meri Jaan movie review, strongly recommended!!

Mumbai Meri Jaan is easily the best movie of 2008, so far. Amazing characterizations, superb performances, realistic dialogues, gripping screenplay and neat direction spruce up this amazing fare that has its roots in reality, the 7-11 bomb blasts in trains of Mumbai that virtually paralysed the city on that fateful day.




Story of Mumbai Meri Jaan
Mumbai Meri Jaan is a poignant story of five people from different walks of life whose lives change after the 7/11 bomb blasts in Mumbai. There are five characters: an angry, unemployed person who has nothng but venom for the minority community, a poor coffee vendor(Irrfan Khan) from Tamil Nadu, who is struggling to make ends meet, a police constable(Paresh Rawal) who has a week to retire, his friend-a junior cop brimming with angst at the state of affairs in the police department, an ace news reporter(Soha Ali Khan) who loses her husband in the blasts and a corporate guy whose life undergoes a transformation after being an eye-witness to the blasts. Mumbai Meri Jaan shows how each of these characters fight their inner fears and come back to lead their lives again as the city limps back to reality


Technicalities of Mumbai Meri Jaan:
Full credit to script and dialogue writer Yogesh Vinayak Joshi, for coming up with powerful characterizations and lines that are a potent mix of humor and pain. Paresh Rawal gets to mouth some of the best lines in the film. His character is of an experienced entity who has seen the best and worst of the police force in his 35 year long career. Director Nishikanth Kamath whose first film in Marathi, Dombivli Fast was a huge hit, has showed that he is a force to reckon with, with Mumbai Meri Jaan. The editing by Amit Pawar is crisp while Sanjay Jadhav’s camera captures the varying moods of the city with deftness. In fact, every facet of Mumbai Meri Jaan does full justice to the movie overall.


Best scenes of Mumbai Meri Jaan:
1. Irrfan Khan going to the mall with his family and trying perfumes generously, much to the chagrin of the shopping staff.
2. The blast scene in the train
3. The bomb hoax in the mall
4. Soha Ali Khan reluctantly agreeing to talk about her personal tragedy on television for the insensitive TV channel, which is looking for bolstering its TRP with her ‘byte’.
5. Almost all of Paresh Rawal’s scenes including the raid at the beer bar, explaining the state of things to Kay Kay in the police van, and his final retirement speech


Performances of Mumbai Meri Jaan:
Mumbai Meri Jaan is doted with amazing performances that makes all the characters believable and so real, that it hurts! Irrfan Khan is the best of the lot, and make no mistake, this one surely looks like an award wining performance. He does not get to mouth much of lines in the film, but the streak of brilliance is evident through the sensitivity with which he portrays the character.
Paresh Rawal, as the constable who has just 7 days to retire, gets to mouth some of the best lines in the film. One of the memorable dialogues being ‘ It does not suit a police man to cry. If you have to cry, pee..the water goes out anyway” What a way to express yourself when you are pissed off with the system! Kay Kay has given yet another commendable performance. R. Madhavan underplays his role and thankfully does not go over the top. Vijay Maurya as the hot-headed constable justifies his part well and compliments Paresh Rawal’s role to the hilt.

Final touch:
Of late, it has been seen in 2008, that Bollywood does better justice to realistic films (examples Jodhaa Akbar, Aamir and Mumbai Meri Jaan) compared to entertainers. Mumbai Meri Jaan is a simple story well told and deftly executed. Strongly recommended.