For all the medical development and access to medicine in India, one of the biggest challenges perhaps is reaching the person in need or getting the patient to a hospital. Indian metros are notoriously infamous for traffic jams and unruly drivers. In a place where traffic rules are only for the weak, chaos reigns supreme.
Fox Star India’s latest thriller is pivoted around this all-important reality of Indian metros. Remake of the 2011 Malayalam film, the Bollywood version – Traffic – stars Manoj Bajpayee as a constable. The only problem is, it is no thriller.
Traffic (2016)
Director: Rajesh Pillai
Stars: Jimmy Shergill, Manoj Bajpayee, Divya Dutta
Traffic Movie Review
Time is of essence when it comes to emergency care. But it can mean life and death when it comes to organ transplant. Traffic explores this all important subject of getting the transplant organ from the donor to the patient waiting to get another lease of life. The only problem is that the movie doesn’t give as much weight to this part as it should.
It begins with a systematic introduction of each of the main characters, which is a big drag and you immediately lose any interest you have. These characters could have come in to the movie without this short lesson. Then it launches into background stories of each of these numerous characters. The only problem is, covering all this in the first half takes away from the valuable and emotional connection that the audience need to make to the main characters – Rehan and Angela.
In spite of this, the movie achieves to evoke some emotions in the audience toward the end of the movie. With Rehan and his love life as the end scene, the focus of the movie again shifts from ‘the challenge’ to the character of Rehan.
The movie would fit in better with the Drama genre than the thriller it was positioned to be. This positioning changes the expectation from the movie and utterly fails to meet those expectations. The thrilling moments in the movie are far and few, and mostly limited to what you see in the trailer.
Apart from this colossal mistake of positioning the movie as a thriller, there are number of blatant mistakes. All through the movie people are shown to use Smartphones and handsets that didn’t exist in 2008 – definitely not common as it shown in the movie.
There are also some public scenes that do not make any sense. Like the one of Rehan’s accident. People gather around Rehan as he falls – this is very common here. But then, for some reason, people are shown taking photos and recording videos of this poor guy all bloodied? So I thought there must be some social media angle here – but no. That’s it, people taking photos of accident victim, for god knows what reason!
Overall, it is good story gone to waste. It seems like the makers could not decide if they wanted the movie to be a Drama or Thriller. And with this confusion, the movie fails on both counts. Moreover, the movie tries to cram too many social messages in the movie. The importance of organ donation being the primary, and redemption and second chance appears to be the other important message, with many in between.
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