Mumbai, July 2 (IANS) Stars: 4.5 stars Director: Nachiket Samant Cast: Huma Qureshi, Seema Pahwa, Chunky Panday and Sikandar Kher

Every so often a film arrives that refuses to resemble anything around it. Baby Do Die Do is that film, a noir soaked in rain, mood and menace, stacked with twists that keep you pinned to the edge of your seat, and quite unlike anything Bollywood has served up in recent memory.

At its centre is Baby Karmarkar, a deaf-and-mute hitwoman operating in an overcrowded Mumbai. A trauma from her past, the murder of her sister, sets off a long, futile search for the killer and pulls her into a life of violence. She carries a gun in her umbrella and eliminates the obstacles standing in the way of her higher bosses, the city’s real-estate mafia. Mostly common men. But the moment she is pushed into killing someone of importance, her carefully sealed world begins to unravel. Just as Baby starts imagining a normal life, one filled with love, for yes, there is a tender love angle here, fuelled by a lovely track from Mohit Chauhan, her violent past starts closing in. And it is in her fight to protect that love, the one glowing thing in her life, that her twenty-year-long hunt for revenge is finally answered.

The film is carried by an eclectic ensemble Huma Qureshi, Chunky Pandey, Sikandar Kher, Seema Pahwa, Rachit Singh, Marudhar Shekhawat, Arun Kushwaha and more, each shouldering the story and impressing amply. But it is Huma Qureshi who rises head and shoulders above the rest. Handicapped, by design, with a character who cannot speak or hear, she speaks volumes with her eyes alone, love and violence rendered with equal force. This is the role of her life.

The music never lets up, each song landing harder than the last. Composer Arjun Iyer delivers banger upon banger, scoring this quirky tale of revenge with real flair. Tojo Xavier’s camerawork is instantly arresting, moody, textured, and central to how singular the film looks. And director Nachiket Samant plays his notes bold and expressive, on the front foot throughout; the bravery of both the narrative and the design is genuinely pathbreaking. That bravery extends behind the camera too: backing a project this bold takes real guts, and producer Saqib Saleem hits it out of the park.

The particular strain of quirk this film finds inside dangerous, high-stakes situations is a rare thing in Bollywood, a register few filmmakers, a Sriram Raghavan among them, have even attempted successfully. The treatment is quirky, confident and, quite simply, cool.

Rains. Mood. Music. Revenge. Love. Quirk. It has it all. Emphatically not-seen-before and for exactly that reason, a must watch. So drop everything and go to the theatres to watch Baby Do Die Do now!

–IANS

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