7 Kadam(Eros Now)
Starring Ronit Roy, Amit Sadh
Directed by K Mohit Kumar Jha
Rating: **
A deep dark family secret is revealed in Episode 3 of this goodhearted but pale drama about a father, son and the unholy dost who tries to tear them apart. When a deeply hurt Aurobindo Pal(Ronit Roy) blurts out that family secret to his wounded-in-his-own-right son Ravi(Amit Sadh) , the sound of a Qawwalli rendered by Javed Ali and performed by him on screen , comes alive on the soundtrack.
The Qawwalli goes Allah kar de reham. Our sentiments, exactly.
It should have been decisive moment in the drama. Sadly this father-son urban fable about failure and its acceptance in the city of Durga Puja and football(we are given to understand that’s all Kolkatans do,celebrate Durga Puja and play football) never takes off. For no fault of the lead actors, I might add.
Ronit Roy playing the alcoholic ex-football coach with a chip on his shoulder is no less than spectacular in some of the key scenes. The fact that his character limps through the plot is significant. It’s the prevalent mood of the screenplay. Ronit gets able support from Amit Sadh as his son. Sadly the two performances are bereft of the heft that would have lifted the drama to a glorious height.
Instead the narrative remains grounded. The plot is inured in mediocrity with some very clumsy acting from the lady who plays Amit Sadh’s love interest. Deeksha Seth should immediately work on her voice modulation. Not her faulty entirely. Everyone sounds fake in that Hindi Bengali accent that they are given to speak . If the characters are Bengali why are they speaking in Hindi among themselves? And if they speak Hindi , why that thick hammy Bangla accent ?
Getting back to the plot, father and son Ronit and Amit are torn apart by a suited rich bully named Babul Bannerjee who has an axe to grind with Ronit. To take revenge he lures son Amit away from his father into his own football team so that the son ends up playing against his own father’s team in the climax.
Uri baba. Bhishoon samasya. The director seems in no mood to delve with any seriousness in the father-son relationship and it’s left to the two actors to work out an equation on screen that makes them look workable . The rest of the cast is lost in trying to fit in.Rohini Bannerjee as Ronit’s wife trying to keep a balance between the father and son plays the thankless role with not hair out of place. They must have spent more on her makeup in this low-budget film than on the football scenes which look woefully inadequate.
And why convert a feature film into four episodes? Doesn’t this drama about a problematic father-son relationship have enough problems of its own?