Anger, like love, can be a many splendoured thing; transforming in tune with the times and circumstances, often reflecting a nation and its peoples collective cares and concerns. While, Saeed Mirza’s 1980 cult classic, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai , struck a relevant chord, the 2019 redux by Soumitra Ranade isn’t able to beyond being a mere good intent. The film was persuasive on paper, perhaps, but certainly not on screen.
- Director: Soumitra Ranade
- Starring: Manav Kaul, Nandita Das, Saurabh Shukla
- Run time: 1 hour 40 minutes
- Storyline: Stella files a report with the cops when her boyfriend Albert Pinto goes missing. Meanwhile, he is on a road trip on his first assignment as a hitman
Stella (Nandita Das) files a report with the cops when her boyfriend Albert Pinto (Manav Kaul) goes missing. The testimonials of his family and friends to the police take the viewers back and forth in time to piece together his life, the injustices meted out to him and the concomitant frustrations. Meanwhile, Pinto is on a road trip to Goa to settle scores on his first assignment as a hitman. Just as in the earlier film, it’s Pinto’s father who holds the key to the rage.
While Kaul does his level best to convey the seething rage within, often in long theatrical monologues and speeches, the situations leading up to his extreme frustrations aren’t grounded well. The actor’s energy and earnestness hang loose without the script’s active support. The portrayal does nothing potent when it comes to the problems, most Indians already know of and contend with already. The film, isn’t able to translate the rage of an individual against the oppressive system and the omnipresent corruption, into something that has been experienced in various ways by us collectively.
Most other characters, including Pinto’s girlfriend Stella (Das) and the several women he keeps seeing her in, are there to serve Albert. They offer points of view about him, bring his back story and the reasons for his rage upfront. They are hardly of any consequence themselves. Other than, perhaps, the professional hitman played by Sourabh Shukla. He has a ball playing to the gallery and brings alive the cynical, matter of fact counter-point to Albert with characteristic ease. However, his connect with the hitman in the making, remains tenuous and obscure, even as the film doesn’t go beyond the flat and the flimsy. The narrative meanders pointlessly, as a bizarre background score plays on noisily and the climax feels just as needlessly knotty. The film would have actually been better titled as Albert Pinto Ki Ajeeb Dastaan.
