Badlapur Review – Imprisoned in Vengeance

Summary : Dexter in the state of personal vengeance!

So there is this 22 years old fellow and his 21 years old girlfriend – who have done the ‘needful’ before wedlock and by chance – maybe they had forgotten to use condoms … she becomes pregnant before marriage! This guy was getting the opportunity of a lifetime – he had got an offer to go abroad – but the news of pregnancy of his girlfriend makes him stay back in India instead …so as to get married and raise their baby together!!

[Reality break: in real life the guy would have asked her to abort and would have gone abroad (watch reality based shows on Saavdhan India and Emotional Attyachaar – you’ll know what I mean) – you see for Indians, the very fact that they are going abroad – even if it is Bangladesh – they jump with joy!- Going to foreign country after all – it is seen as an achievement in India…by ‘we, the Indians’].

So this guy joins an advertising agency and in the scene where his life was going to take a complete ‘U’ turn, he was sharing an idea of a brassier advertisement – very crassy…plus he was belittling his boss – you know kind of mocking him and all…when he gets the news that his wife had been shot and his 6 years old son was run over by a car…or met with an accident. He rushes to the hospital and sees his wife die right in front of him and his child was lying in the morgue after the postmortem!

He comes to know that one of the bank robbers was caught but his accomplice had escaped (like his wife was shot by those bank robbers and the child was thrown out of the car by the same thugs – actually the boy had accidentally fallen off the car and the wife also got shot accidentally !)

So this bank robber (who was the actual murderer but confessed that his accomplice had shot the wife) was jailed for 20 years and so does the hero get imprisoned in his self inflicted vengeance state! Badla is a Hindi word for vengeance (revenge). So basically the hero gets imprisoned in a state of vengeance.

He cuts him off from the rest of his world – stays away from parents and friends, colleagues. Takes up a small time job in a factory and lived with his memories waiting for the robber to get released so that he could find the address of his accomplice – who, the robber had confessed, had actually shot his wife.

Years pass and on the 15^th year, the prison authorities come to know that the robber was suffering from stomach cancer and therefore the hero was asked to sign a document of forgiveness – so that he gets released and dies peacefully at home. The hero declines but when he gets the address of the accomplice through the robber’s mother, he signs his release papers. Hero tracks down his accomplice and kills them brutally – both husband and wife (like Dexter used to kill with plastic sheets etc.) .

Hero tells this to the robber who was shocked to see his state of mind and cold hearted cruelty. He then realizes that a single mistake on his part ruined a promising career and a good person so decides to save him from getting punished for dual murder. The robber then gets himself arrested (for murdering his accomplice and his wife) giving the hero a chance to heal himself.

Message – One should not waste time in vengeance?

Observations: We have Criminal rehabilitation officers – why not have them before they become criminals!? Why not educate children and not let them beg on streets? Why not eradicate poverty and prostitution altogether instead of asking humans to ‘forget and forgive’ forever?!!

“Kyu Purane chawal main keede dhoond rahe ho” – This is the reply the mother of the bank robber gives him when he asks what was at least one good thing about his father…meaning the robber’s father was a good for nothing creature full of vices. Literally it means – when the rice grains are totally ‘mites- infested’ then there is no point in trying to separate rice from the mites – like it remains of no use to anyone! This revelation about the father hurts the robber and before surrendering himself, he requests his mother to not call him a ‘good-for-nothing’ mite infested grain! Shows that every human being keeps the potential to become good if circumstances allow that. And this is probably one of the reasons why the Indian Penal Code takes such a long long long time to punish the criminals…..