Kartik Aryan’s Dhamaka’s plot constantly reminded me of Neeraj pandey’s Wednesday. One call from an anonymous person who poses to or is assumed to be a terrorist shakes the entire nation… And the drama that unfolds later!
What failed for Dhamaka when the plot was so intriguing? Both, its direction and performances. We cannot forget that while Dhamaka comes from the director of web series like Aarya which was a complete disaster, Wednesday comes from Neeraj Pandey, the man who made Special Ops.
The story, I would say, was still ok but the treatment given to it was not at all ok. It was chaotic. At one point, it feels like the storytellers lost the track; as if they forgot what they were supposed to do/tell next. The story had so much potential, so much to tell, so many angles to show, so many complexities, and so much corporate politics to focus on, but the Director failed to note it down and hence couldn’t understand what exactly to put forth or how to narrate the story in a way that would keep the audience engaged.
The way some of our news channels are functioning these days, we know that for them, their channel comes first. TRPs come before journalism, humanity, and sometimes, even before the nation. When Arjun Pathak makes a deal in exchange of sharing the details of the blast with his boss or the way he withholds information and doesn’t inform the Police says a lot about today’s media. Not involving the right authorities at the right time worsens it further which results in the increasing intensity of blasts at the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. When does Arjun Pathak start taking it seriously and stop looking at it as a golden opportunity to climb the ladder of success? When a bomb gets fixed in his ear as a earpiece and when he sees his wife (also a reporter) at the blast site. This transformation of the character, from a success chasing monster to a sensible human being again, was one of the key points that would have made this entire film worth watching. But Kartik Aryan has miserably failed to bring any emotion to Arjun Pathak’s character or his life-story.
Most of the time, it feels like Kartik is attending an acting school where he is still learning the basics of acting, starting from just reading out the script and showing your mentors the emotions (without feeling any of it). You can say that 90% of the time, the screen is occupied by Kartik Aryan. In such cases, delivering such a weak performance is disastrous, both for the film and his career.
Coming back to the story, it has many loopholes like earpiece given by the news channel to their Arjun or the guest having a bomb in it or turning a radio studio into a newsroom in a jiffy or making Arjun Pathak attend a live interview on a competitor’s channel while he is still on a live show with the so-called terrorist makes this entire film look amateur – with regards to writing as well as direction. The list is long so if you are going to watch this movie, I will leave it to you – spot the mistakes. That is the only way to entertain yourself.
If I have to sum it up in one word, I would call it, a DISASTER!
Streaming On: Netflix
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