Maalik

The year is 1990, the place is Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, and violence is the running theme of ‘Maalik’. Though Bengali superstar Prosenjit Chatterjee’s swag as a police officer is on ample display, the film belongs to Rajkummar Rao. As and in ‘Maalik’, he is menace personified, a gangster who kills without flinching, who rules through dread and fear. Rajkummar has donned a new avatar, far removed from his usual romcom films. The incredible actor that he is, he lives the character, channels the anger within, seethes, fumes and kills like never before. But when the hero is also the anti-hero, the makers could not resist the temptation to give him a romantic backstory, in this case his wife Shalini (Manushi Chillar).

Maalik opens with a shootout in 1990, Allahabad. A dacoit-like gangster named Deepak (Rajkummar Rao), a.k.a Maalik (“owner”), is wounded and bullet-riddled. The police have surrounded the hideout. The Bengali superintendent (Prosenjit Chatterjee) cracks a movie joke on the loudspeaker while telling him to surrender. Maalik shoots back through the window. The film then rewinds to a few years ago, starting in earnest to show how Maalik reaches this moment. It’s a narrative older than time. You’d think that if something evokes memories of Satya, Agneepath, Vaastav, Sarkar and every other popular mafia-origins movie, it must be a solid contender. But the opposite is true here: Maalik feels like a childhood film-making wish being fulfilled — an all-you-can-eat genre buffet assembled from scraps of classics — rather than an inventive or original shot in the dark.

1990 के समय का इलाहाबाद। दीपक के मज़दूर पिता को किसी ने खेत समेत रौंद डाला तो उसे मार कर वह पॉवर का भूखा बन बैठा और जल्दी ही इलाके का ‘मालिक’ हो गया। उसकी मर्ज़ी के बगैर अब शहर में कुछ नहीं होता। लेकिन कुछ समय बाद वही लोग उसके खिलाफ हो गए जो कल तक उसके सरपरस्त थे। अब एक तरफ ‘मालिक’ है और दूसरी ओर उसके दुश्मन। हर तरफ से गोलियां बरस रही हैं और पुलिस कभी इस पाले में तो कभी उस पाले में कूद रही है। अपराधी, नेता और पुलिस की जुगलबंदी का प्लॉट हमारी फिल्मों के लिए कोई नया नहीं है। सच तो यह है कि यह जुगलबंदी हमारे समाज का ही एक ऐसा कड़वा और स्वीकार्य सच है जिसे फिल्म वाले अलग-अलग नज़रिए और अलग-अलग शैली में दिखाते रहते हैं। पर्दे पर ऐसी जुगलबंदियां जब शानदार निकलती हैं तो ‘सत्या’, ‘वास्तव’ हो जाती हैं और अगर बेकार निकलें तो ‘मालिक’ बन जाती हैं। ऐसी तमाम फिल्मों की तरह यह फिल्म भी इस बात को रेखांकित करती है कि ताकत पाने के बाद हर अपराधी सत्ता की कुर्सी चाहता है कि ताकि आज उसके पीछे पड़ी पुलिस कल उसकी बॉडीगार्ड बन जाए।

Rajkummar Rao is going through a purple patch. Taking a break from his comic capers, this week, the actor dons the cape of an outlaw, a product of social injustice who ends up becoming the mirror image of what he sets out to wipe off. Maalik sounds like a spiritual cousin of Manoj Bajpayee’s Bhaiyya Ji, which was released last year. Both films posit masters of understatement who revel in realistic space in a bombastic, mainstream atmosphere. While Bhaiyya Ji went completely off-key after setting up the conflict, Maalik has its moments as writer-director Pulkit manages to create the mood that we associate with Tigmanshu Dhulia’s kind of cinema. The film is set in the feudal Allahabad of the late 1980s, where Deepak (Rajkummar), the son of a farm worker (a solid Rajendra Gupta), rebels against the landlords to become a ganglord and assumes the title of ‘Maalik.’ The police stations of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are full of case files of history sheeters like Deepak, who picked up a gun because of caste or class struggle, and were adopted by politicians to maintain the balance of power. Raj lends the flawed character flesh and blood, and adds sparks to the predictable character arc.

Underworld dons have weepy back stories of injustice that turned them into gangster-killers. Political patronage (Saurav Shukla as big daddy Santosh Singh) must figure in the making of a ruthless new Maalik (Rajkummar Rao). The heartlessness has to show up in a couple of scenes like humiliating a cop by making him lick his own spit on the ground before he’s shot dead. Or gunning down a rival gangster before his young son. Maalik will even swagger and confront boastful, offensive encounter specialist SP Prabhu Das (Prosenjit) to warn him to never step into his house again and threaten his parents. Gangster heroes are also family men, don’t mess with their parents or talk to a wife they adore. Recall gangster Vinod Khanna as the soft-as-pulp husband in Haath Ki Safaai (1974).

If you came for redemption, you’re watching the wrong movie. Maalik is not a typical political gangster drama. It’s a heavy, slow-burn tale of ambition that spirals into wrath, a story where the lines between politics, power and personal vendetta dissolve into one long, blood-slicked road. Know more about Maalik movie story and ending, explained here. The Maalik movie trailer promised us high-stakes drama, and it delivers with guns, grenades, betrayals, and a body count that would make George R. R. Martin blush. Set primarily in a particularly politically charged city of Allahabad, Maalik is a film where every handshake has a hidden dagger and every ally a secret price. And leading us down that path is none other than Rajkummar Rao. He is haunting, magnetic, tragic, and brutal as Deepak aka Maalik. From humble beginnings to self-proclaimed overlord, Deepak’s evolution into “Maalik” is Shakespearean in scope and Greek in tragedy. It’s Scarface meets Sarkar but with a nastier streak. Before we dive into the shootouts and twists, let’s unravel the full Maalik movie story and then walk you through that devastating ending of this gangster movie.

Rajkummar Rao’s film is an action drama that falls into the same trap of several other releases from the same genre. The film has very little uniqueness to offer as compared to other OTT films and shows based in the same region, with similar dialogues, political issues with violence at the center of it all. From Mirzapur to now Panchayat, Maalik fits right in, without much setting it apart, other than Rajkummar Rao’s performance. But the film’s violence heavy screenplay leaves little focus on his emotional moments. Maalik begins with Rajkummar Rao’s character Deepak punishing and killing a police officer for stopping his trucks at a check point. Without wasting much time, the filmmaker clears the air about who the film will follow and how the events will take place. For the next 30 minutes the makers focused on the political environment of Allahabad and how Maalik intends to make a space for himself.