India’s Thar Desert, with an area of 200,000 square km, is a massive expanse of land that covers the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. Sparsely populated and terribly parched, the desert is a grim setting for any movie. But Netflix’s latest “Thar” opens with shots of the Thar that redefine the aesthetics of the Great Indian Desert.
Director Raj Singh Chaudhary and his group of cinematographers create stunning visuals all through the Hindi-language action thriller. Set in 1985, the film is based in Munabao, a small village in Rajasthan near the India-Pakistan border that also happens to be a transit for cross-border opium trade.
Alongside the desert’s exquisite visuals, the film begins with the unmistakable voice of Anil Kapoor, who as Inspector Surekha Singh introduces the village and gives an idea of what’s transpiring there.
Munabao has been a sleepy village since Inspector Singh’s posting there. But then an unknown assailant is shot and brutally slaughtered in broad daylight; a family preparing for their daughter’s wedding is attacked and killed by merciless dacoits. Suddenly, Singh has his hands full, trying to find the culprits behind both the incidents and figuring out if the two events are connected.
The arrival of a new man in town—Siddharth Kumar (Harshvardhan Kapoor) —further complicates things for the inspector. Siddharth claims to be an antiques dealer and hires a local called Panna (Jitendra Joshi) to work for him. While Panna is away, he convinces his wife Chetna (Fatima Sana Shaikh) into keeping him in their house as a tenant.
Styled after the Western noir genre, Thar is a dark and gritty slow burner that features the classic story of crime, revenge and punishment. Think of any John Wayne or Gary Cooper movie, but in a much darker tone and customized for the Indian OTT audience.
I mention the OTT audience particularly because Thar is not something Bollywood would produce. If it did, the 2007 suspense thriller “Manorama Six Feet Under,” also based in Rajasthan with so similarities to this movie, would not have bombed at the box office despite so many good reviews.
The legendary actor Anil Kapoor’s son Harshvardhan has previously tried to enter the Bollywood film industry but was rejected by the audience and critics alike. Thar is the starlet’s attempt to enter the Indian OTT multiverse.
But here too he fails to show any good skills and his two or three facial expressions soon get boring to watch. Kapoor Jr. is terribly outshined by his father. The movie was an opportunity for Harshvardhan to redeem himself, but he does not seem to be trying much. In a movie based in a rural Rajasthani village in the 80s, Harshvardhan is still a 2022 Mumbai-boy.
The senior Kapoor, however, gets into character easily and shows us how he’s maintained a stellar reputation for himself in Bollywood and Hollywood for all these years. But the real show stealer is actor Fatima Sana Shaikh. I admit I am no expert in Rajasthani language, but Shaikh does seem to have nailed the accent and the attitude of a local Rajasthani woman.
In her rather limited role as Chetna, Shaikh gives her best and manages to come into the spotlight even when the filmmakers seemingly did not want her to. I can’t but imagine the actor’s impact had her character been given more thought while writing.
The writing in Thar is as mediocre as Harshvardhan’s acting. It takes inspiration from tried-and-tested movie stories but does not improvise much to create something of its own. A little bit of novelty could have given the film more substance than it now has.
Who should watch it?
Thar is a slow thriller with a good amount of violence and not much suspense. So it’s basically a straight-up thriller one can enjoy without giving much thought to the (predictable) storyline. But a regular Western noir audience would know how to judge better than that, right?
Rating: 2.5 stars
Director: Raj Singh Chaudhar
Actor: Anil Kapoor, Harshvardhan Kapoor, Fatima Sana Shaikh
Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 1hr 48mins
