Laal Kaptaan – Navdeep Singh’s Western is a Dreary Snoozefest

Laal Kaptaan

In the last thirty months or so, Saif Ali Khan has done some of the most interesting work in his career, and by a Bollywood actor in a while. From an Anglophile Parsi film producer (Rangoon) to a New York-based chef (Chef) to a middle-aged man with not very long to live (Kaalakaandi) to an Angadiya stock market maverick (Baazaar), he’s done the sort of roles you wouldn’t expect from him. And then there’s the elephant in the room – Sacred Games ­– in which he stood out despite there being numerous other, more consistent actors. Sure, he’s not had a great time where Bollywood’s biggest turn-on – the box office – is concerned, but his sincerity towards his craft has been on the up for a while.

It’s not surprising then that he chose to do a film like Laal Kaptaan, set in 1789, and featuring a Naga Sadhu bounty hunter as the protagonist, along with a bevvy of interesting characters. It seems the kind of film he’d do, with his awareness of history (the film’s plot ties in with the Battle of Buxar) and his change of tack where roles are concerned.

Saif plays Gosain (pronounced Go-sa-een), a vengeful hunter out to settle scores with turncoat chieftain Rehmat Khan for what Khan did when he turned traitor and joined hands with the East India Company at Buxar. After one of the first kills that Gosain scores in the film, he ties the body to a horse and trots through a village. It’s not a gruesome sight, nor an unsettling one. But it infuses in you hope about the film. Over the film’s runtime of a hundred and fifty-five minutes, that hope is undone, bit by bit.

In many ways, the film is on solid footing – it’s got a decent soundtrack by Samira Koppikar (though I’d have expected folks to no longer give Kailash Kher work), it gets the action set pieces – choreographed by Abdul Salaam Ansari – just right; Shanker Raman’s cinematography is sparse in style but does justice to what the film is trying to show; the production design by Rakesh Yadav is also on point.

With all of these elements falling into place, it’s strange that film struggles to form itself into a compelling narrative. It’s a gripping premise but the screenplay by Deepak Venkatesha and director Navdeep Singh is so poorly structured that you can’t help but wonder – while watching the film – what could have been. The story grabs your attention straight away and the film’s opening scenes are very engaging. But that little good work is undone by how strangely inert the film seems to be. I’m game for a serious, dramatic Western but the seriousness needn’t be boring. Venkatesha and Navdeep write some interesting material, but temper that down with many strange happenings too. One comes away with the feeling that what is on screen is more of a first-draft screenplay, with a lot of the flab still left on, rather than a fully-realised sequence of events.

The characters are barely sketched out, and everyone seems to have got one-word prompts to go do their thing with. As Rehmat Khan’s nagging wife, Simone Singh tries to find a balance between annoying him and annoying the audience. She ends up doing both very successfully, getting under Rehmat’s skin fast because he’s a madman and under the audience’s because there’s only so much one-noteness you can take. Aamir Bashir, playing Khan’s lieutenant and close friend, is his quiet, understated self, but is saddled with a part that does very little with him.

The key supporting roles are played by a trio of very fine actors. Manav Vij (Andhadhun, Udta Punjab) plays Rehmat, and he gives the role a measure of menace and mental unease, seeming as on-the-edge as a constantly traitorous character can be. As a detective/tracker, Deepak Dobriyal (Omkara, Kaalakaandi) brings a smile to your face in the gloom of the film. Frolicking around with his two desi dogs, trying to find the scent of the person he has been contracted to locate, Dobriyal is funny without being foolhardy. It’s a crime that so little is seen of this fine, fine actor when he is so capable. Zoya Hussain rounds off the supporting cast, playing a mysterious young woman who accompanies Gosain for a fair chunk of his hunt. Hussain, who was incredible in Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz as the fiery Sunaina, is damn good. Saying too much would ruin a “big” moment of the character, but suffice it to say that she seizes the opportunity of doing something with the most well-written character in the film.

Saif Ali Khan’s performance is more physical than anything he’s done before. Looking as unlike the Nawab of Pataudi as possible, Saif gives Gosain (though the film is titled “Laal Kaptaan” and he plays the titular character, that isn’t a term ever used to refer to him) an animalistic streak. Each move, each grunt, each glance has a feeling of design to it. And the performance works. For the most part. When he utters dialogue, however, he oscillates between sounding like an ancestor of Langda Tyagi and that of just about every urban character he’s played.

Navdeep Singh relies too much on the screenplay’s big reveal. As a result of that alone, he struggles to get the film to work. Far too much hinges on Gosain’s reasons for hunting down Rehmat Khan than should. Thus, the film feels far from complete and yet about three-quarters of an hour too long. If it had been fleshed out the right amount and been as long a film as it is, it would’ve worked. But the former is far from realised. It’s a great story that just doesn’t translate into a narrative that sucks you in and keeps you hooked – one way or another – for its tremendously long runtime.

Laal Kaptaan is by no means a bad film, but it achieves far less than it should have and its inertia is ultimately its biggest failing.