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Movie review 'NH 10': A night of terror

NH 10 is not an easy watch, and the helpless tension of the woman protagonist has searing intensity, finds Deepa Gauri

Why does one make films in Bollywood? The obvious answer is money. Now we have Anurag Kashyap, one of the producers of NH 10, who has successfully crossed over to that turf where both money and artistic sensibilities are matched.

So when Anushka Sharma, who has had her name and fame in commercial cinema, steps in as co-producer of NH 10, obviously, the effort is not just for box office count. Add to it the ‘woman angle,’ and we are primed to watch a film about all that goes wrong with women in India today.

NH 10 delivers exactly that, until it flips to the next side of the story – of how women can address the intrusions and violence they face. Here NH 10 becomes just another Bollywood film, where women power is reduced to single-handed revenge.

So here is Meera (Anushka Sharma), the successful executive who makes her male colleagues insecure, who can initiate the first step for you know what with her husband, and who is a Tamilian (for some flawed reason she is shown as being dumbfounded when an inspector asks about her caste; didn’t director Navdeep Singh realise that casteism runs deeper down south?)

Her husband Arjun, played with refreshing candour by Neil Bhoopalam, is extremely loving, willing to play docile, but then, has the male ego issue. The film starts off with Meera facing a potential threat as a single woman on the road and it builds into an electrifying tension, reminding you of all that is wrong about Delhi. But this is just an excuse for a plot prop – a gun, here – that is needed to drive the story further.

So we have young couple, out on the highway – NH 10 – when they get entangled in an honour killing: initially it is just ‘the right thing’ for Ajrun to do, and later on, it becomes just an ego issue. Things go terribly wrong and it becomes imperative for Meera to step up to the game.

The protagonists have only luck and quick wit on their side while the antagonists (with no remorse over what they do, other than to honour their village and caste) have everything to their advantage.

The way the latter group is captured, in fact, is one of the high points of the film. They butcher two people but then the perpetuator cries like a baby when death comes knocking for his own family member. They look down upon women the way they have been taught to and even a woman chieftain (Deepti Naval) is but following the norms of the society. Everyone is just doing ‘what they have to do’ as if by moral sanction.

With no catharsis in sight (one never really exists in real life, going by everyday incidents of violence against women) for Meera, the director Navdeep Singh takes the easy way. Blood for blood, an eye for an eye. And an iron rod, symbolic of how Nirbhaya, the rape victim in Delhi was brutally killed, serves as the weapon.

With perfect casting, NH 10 is carried single-handedly by Anushka. She is spot on, but is this the ‘award-winning’ Kahaani moment in her career? Doubtful. That is not her fault; the character has only so much space to grow before it becomes a caricature pandering to audience expectations.

NH 10 is gripping alright, but what really is the point it makes? Telling us that honour killings happen, that our society is a threat to women, or to remind us, the insensitive urbanites, to just mind our business or we will get into trouble?