I did not have the fortune of watching any of Pulkit’s feature films, apart from the ALT Balaji miniseries “Bose: Dead/Alive,” before watching “Maalik.” I especially regret not having watched “Bhakshak” (2024), which last year caught some critical attention. However, my first engagement with Pulkit, in terms of a feature film, was not bad at all. I liked “Maalik” to an extent. Not because it is the kind of popular cinema I was eagerly waiting for, but because of its attempt to bring back a certain genre that Bollywood had abandoned long ago.
The ‘Angry Young Man’, in other words a simpleton, driven by some past events, choosing the path of a gangster/Mafia to place himself in the highest strata of power, a (wayward) hero of the working class, had literally vanished from the popular discourse of Hindi Cinema since the early 90s, after enriching Bollywood – both commercially and critically – throughout the 70s and 80s.
Critics and academics have pointed out this event as an aftermath of India’s adoption of the Neoliberal economy, which has been reflected in the popular art in the guise of a handful of distorted and isolated trivial tales of individual bourgeois crises. Though a few pockets did emerge to exhume the rebel spirit, to stir the Angry Young Man from his slumber. To name a few from the last decade, Karan Malhotra’s thoughtful remake of Mukul Anand’s “Agneepath” (1990) was a spectacular effort to popularize the forgotten hero. Rahul Dholakia’s “Raees” could be added to this list, but it had the problem of a stale screenplay, from which “Maalik” is not free either.
It happens so often with these efforts that, after a point, the screenplay loses the charm … especially once the aura of the protagonist is stabilized and you have already seen the entanglements of his psyche, and lastly, when his masculinity has bewitched you (often an unconscious political intention). This is why “Maalik” had to incorporate a couple of unnecessary songs in the second half – a vain effort to keep the film on track. One of them, of course, is an item number starring, not your favorite Tamannah Bhatia this time, but Huma Qureshi. I have become tired of criticizing this particular kind of usage of music to cover up the voids the writer has left for you in the screenplay. It doesn’t work, man! Rather, it asks us to peek into the patches you want to hide so guiltily.
Keeping all bits and pieces of what I have said so far in mind, I need to tell you that I still, anyway, liked “Maalik” and I insist that you watch it on the big screen. You might soon have the opportunity to watch it on Amazon Prime, but I really don’t endorse this decision of watching it at home. Some films are made to be witnessed on the big screen, and “Maalik,” certainly, is one of them. I liked it not because of what it is but because it attempted to bring back the hero, whom, in search of clichéd romantic shenanigans, we have left behind. The churning up of a working-class hero from oblivion is the reason that drives me to stand by “Maalik.”
It unravels the saga of a farmer’s son Deepak (Rajkumar Rao) becoming of ‘Maalik’ (owner). Witnessing the plight of his father (Rajendra Gupta), Deepak turns into a sort of anarchist rebel and determines to dethrone the existing owners and place himself as the ruler of the territory. But – as you can predict – his trajectory ain’t easy! Deepak wishes to accomplish – if vendetta can be considered an accomplishment at all – everything he longs for, and, in doing so, he finds the whole world against him. Even his camaraderie with ‘Badaun’ (Anshuman Pushkar) is shattered into pieces in the end – an upside-down in the story that Pulkit must have wanted to cater to us as a surprise, but I’m sorry it was predictable.
The film opens with a shootout, taking place in Allahabad in 1990, and soon, with multiple flashbacks, unfolds Deepak’s journey. In his course to become ‘Maalik’ (owner) from ‘Naukar’ (servant), Deepak ticks all the boxes necessary for the embodiment of an Angry Young Man: he commits a daring act, early in his life, and diffuses the air with a premonition of his arrival as a local leader. The Angry Young Man must isolate himself from his family and spend his days and nights in hideouts like a guerrilla soldier … Deepak fulfills this criterion too. Incessant, tragic events must be interlaced with his life, and Deepak abides by this. But, even after all these, “Maalik” remains only an attempt to bring back the dead hero because it lacks depth in its characters. This deficit in the screenplay bars the whole film from becoming what it could have been.
What irritated me, rather than the loopholes of the writing – something we have become used to with Bollywood – was the helpless inertia of so many veteran and talented actors, such as Saurabh Shukla, Rajendra Gupta, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Saurabh Sachdeva, and others. Apart from the protagonist, every other character lacks a backstory. Thus, they end up as floating characters, without a root. Neither the events of their unmasking nor their elimination are potent enough to steer emotions in our hearts.
Amid the flaws, “Maalik” maintains its decency in the smart editing. Anuj Dhawan (DoP) and Zubin Sheikh (editor) both deserve appreciation. An applause for Saurabh Sachdeva must be conveyed. Among the heavyweight actors, Sachdeva delivers one of the best performances in the film, and very likely you’ll be seeing him from now on playing dark characters more frequently. The only hope that remains in the end is that the saga of ‘Deepak’ has not come to an end yet. A bloodbath in West Bengal awaits.
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