Judgementall Hai Kya Review: The Writing Is Terrific, Kangana Ranaut Steals The Show And Rajkummar Rao Yet Again Proves His Mettle

Film: Judgementall Hai Kya

Writer: Kanika Dhillon

Director: Prakash Kovelamudi

Actors: Kangana Ranaut, Rajkummar Rao, Jimmy Shergill

My Verdict: The Excellent Writing And Superlative Performances Make This A One Of A Kind Film – A MUST WATCH!

4.5 out of 5 Stars

What a film it is! This is the kind of film a filmmaker would aspire to make; these are the kind of actors a filmmaker would aspire to work with. I mean there comes psychological thrillers, crime thrillers, contained thrillers, action thrillers, conspiracy thrillers, Revenge thrillers, sci-fi thrillers, erotic thrillers and then comes a ‘Judgementall Hai Kya’.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that the film is a masterclass on a whodunit kind of psychological cinema! The writing takes centre stage; every part of the film is excellently written and even fabulously executed! The leitmotif used in the form of a VFXed cockroach was the cherry on the cake and not to forget the recreated ‘Dhappa Dhappa’ song that came back time and again to make the audiences aware of things that could be. Superlative usage of the auditory leitmotif and I can’t forget the tongue-twister leitmotifs either!

Judgementall Hai Kya tells the story of Bobby played with absolute oneness by none other than Kangana Ranaut who suffers from psychosis but is in denial. She works as a dubbing artist and she takes all the characters she dubs for so seriously that she becomes one with them. (The character is in tandem with the real Kangana herself isn’t it?) The problems arise when she begins to intertwine real people with fictional ones! She has trust issues because of all that she has faced in life, her troubled childhood, how people took her to be guilty because of the death of her parents, how they looked at her and singled her out, unfortunately the circumstances she gets herself into put her in the spot all the time and again she sees those glares making her stand guilty, even when she is not!

Rajkummar Rao plays Keshav, a suave gentleman who is not quite what he seems to be! Keshav and his wife come to stay as a tenant in Bobby’s house. A few days down the line, Keshav’s wife is killed in a gruesome fire mishap and Bobby is somehow convinced that Keshav is the murderer! She goes all out to prove to the cops that he is indeed guilty but due to her circumstances and her way of putting the Rubic’s cube together she is taken to be a lunatic and is sent to the asylum!

After being released, she visits her cousin in London and much to her surprise, she finds Keshav has now married her cousin who is also pregnant with her child. Even though she tries to calm her nerves down by gulping down the prescribed pills, she strongly feels that something is amiss with Keshav and once again she starts hunting for proofs that would prove Keshav is indeed the killer and now he wants to kill his second wife too!

Jimmy Shergill is a play director who tries to understand Bobby. His sweet smile and soft countenance make Bobby feel good, he tries to help her with her trust issues and tries to analyse situations by putting himself in her shoes! His warmth comes as a much-needed dose of soft romance in this gritty tale!

The hero of the film is the writer. What lovely writing, the usage of leitmotifs just nails it! I mean Kanika Dhillon’s tight script and the taut screenplay is the backbone of the film. Every little nuance is delved into which is so much necessary in a film of this kind! Nothing is spoon-fed! You have to have the brains to understand what is going on and how one character gets from one place to the other. In this connection I have to mention about a particular scene in the film, bobby takes a cab in London and the cabbie asks her whether she is visiting London for the first time. Bobby who is busy trying to locate her cousin’s address which she ended up deleting is agitated and she retorts, “Tere baap ka Kya jaata hai, first time in London or fifth time in London?” and the cabbie throws her out and she is stranded in the middle of the highway. In the same shot, we see at a distance; a man is sitting on his motorcycle and Bobby sheepishly walks towards him with all her luggage. Point to be noted here is she is not shown talking to the motorcycle guy asking for a lift. We just see random montage shots of the London skyscape and then she knocks on her cousin’s door. There are moments in the film – for instance, the play which Jimmy Shergill directs in the film is a modern-day representation of the Ramayana and how the woman is always inveigled and enticed but this time it is not the Ravana who will hunt down Sita, it is Sita who will hunt Ravana down!

Kangana Ranaut has played many such obsessive, psychotic characters in the past. In fact, her character in Judgementall will remind one and all of her character from Woh Lamhe. But this time, the character has a twist – someone who is termed to be psychotic or demented or mental is perhaps not always flipped -out or off one’s rocker! Sometimes, people who are so-called normal are completely oblivious to what the abnormal people can perceive or understand. Judgementall Hai Kya brings that out in the open! Kangana surpasses all finish lines when it comes to her characters. She is indeed one actress who is always so seeped into her roles that it becomes difficult to comprehend what she is in reality! That is the charm of the lady! Her curls, her wacky body language, the prominent nerve that swells out on the side of her neck when she talks, the vulnerability she oozes in her scenes so on and so forth… I firmly believe, no one else could have done what she has done with the role in the film. In all earnestness, she is a gift to Bollywood!

Rajkummar Rao’s Keshav is layered. He is a terrific actor, the way the writer has written his role and the way he executed it is laudable. His body language, his eye movements, his dialogue delivery are so precise (which again is so needed in the film) that he manages to confuse the viewer till the very end! At times, I wondered, how it must have been for the two off-camera on the sets of the film. Given the fact that Rao is from the Delhi-Haryana border and Ranaut hails from Himachal Pradesh, Mandi which again is not very far from Gurugram, they must have been well aware of each other’s vibes and the reactions to certain things – Was it useful in the film? Did that translate on-camera as well? Well, from the looks of it, it surely did!

Jimmy Shergill looks great with Kangana, we have seen the duo in Tanu Weds Manu and once again whenever the two came together, sparks flew left right and centre! The softness in his countenance, his glances, his smile gave that much needed romantic streak in the film!

The direction by Prakash Kovelamudi is strong, it never loses grip and maintains the pace and it did justice to the writing. As I mentioned earlier little nuances were kept in mind. For instance, the look of Keshav in the first half was very distinctive from the second. In the first half, Rao is seen donning an overgrown stubble with a little tan, studs in one ear - his physicality was given importance (the female gaze was kept in mind), the bad guy smoking a cigarette in the night while the wife is unaware while Bobby derives a certain kind of voyeuristic pleasure just staring at him. In the second half, Keshav is shown to be clean-shaven, mostly in suits. The usage of pop art to drive as a parallel between the psychedelic atmosphere that is within Kangana’s mind. There are so many elements in the film!

The cinematography by Pankaj Kumar too didn’t disappoint. Everything was precise and looked good. The usage of colours, the dark tones used to underline the suspense and the sinister happenings or the mindset and then the bright tones which are used especially in the scenes that had Jimmy Shergill and Kangana sharing some light moments. The edit by consulting editor Shweta Venkat and additional editors Prasanth Ramachandran and Sheeba Seghal was fast and nothing looked forced, the usage of jump cuts, the usage of hyper-lapses so on and so forth was to the point!

All in all, a must-watch, because a film of this sort is not made everyday especially in Bollywood!