Alia's super Highway to success

Highway

Starring: Randeep Hooda, Alia Bhatt

Rated: 6.5/10

This one is a slow burner, a real slow burner. But it burns bright all through, thanks to the directorial chutzpah of Imtiaz Ali. He has done this movie after a long hiatus and he has dared to be different  different and slow, challenging the audiences to be drawn into what could easily have been an unending long and needless road trip in an uncomfortable bus.

But it is all kudos to Imtiaz’s way of building up a story in the most un-Bollywood style that he manages to turn it into a gripping saga which keeps the audiences, even the restless sceptics for that matter, in the loop of interest.

It is also to his credit that he has moulded the young and fresh Alia  Bhatt’s gestational histrionic skills to come to life in a very surprise package. Though Randeep Singh Hooda as usual gives in a controlled but powerful performance as a have-not abductor, it is by all means a through-and-through Alia Bhatt film.

Ticked off as a beautiful and plump bimbette from the House of Bhatts, after she debuted in Karan Johar’s Student Of The Year, one would have thought she had it in her to display even a modicum of acting prowess. But she does so here and does it with quite some seasoned display. She is totally unglamourised, totally married to her role and totally gripping in the performance that she renders. Yes, there is a bit of Stockholm Syndrome that powers her story, besides her singing skills, but as a child victim of incest looking for a life outside the cage of her suffocating family, she develops her character quite well — in fact so well that even Hooda comes across as a side dish to the proceedings so tantalizingly woven into drama by Imtiaz.

It is a slow film but it is a wonderfully different one which should not be missed by serious film watchers.

Source: Sunday Pioneer,  23 February, 2014