Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s original story and Bejoy Nambiar’s directed Wazir is somewhat a brilliant take on the acute mind game called chess. The film relates the characters with the game so gracefully that one would really wonder how this incisive game can turn normal beings into incredible masterminds who could strategically do anything, even the act of suicide, to bring down the non-deserving king.
The film starts with a normal happy family of an Anti Terrorist Squad agent named Daanish (Farhan Akhtar), a vigorous husband, with a loving wife, Ruhana (Aditi Rao Hydari), and an innocent little kid Noorie. This blessed family soon after, gets to feel a doleful feeling of losing the only child, who becomes the victim of a shootout between her father and some terrorists, this devastating act of causing the deadly encounter, and making his wife a living dead, haunts Daanish every night, giving him unbelievable reasons to do what he never ever thought of doing, he ends up killing the terrorists who were the reason behind his sad turn up, and decides to end his life, there a wise man named Omkar (Amitabh Bachchan) makes him realize that it’s not the end yet. Pawn makes his first move by introducing a Rook into the game, Omkar Nath Dhar A.K.A ‘Panditji’ a crippled man without both legs, tries to drag Daanish out of his destroyed self by making him learn chess, after some good game sessions and influential conversations, and understanding, Panditji take Daanish in confidence and shares tragic story of his daughter Nima’s Death, and asks for his help to investigate the closed case against a very powerful politician minister Yazaad Qureshi (Manav Kaul), Pawn makes Rook aware of his capabilities. Daanish re-opens the case, and approaches Qureshi for questioning, but with his political power Qureshi ends up closing the case again. When Pawn sends his Rook, to give the king a little hard time, the King sends his wicked Queen to make sure that Pawn knows his value. Qureshi sees Omkar and Daanish as a threat to his political career, and there Wazir (Neil Nithin Mukesh) a psychotically wicked devotee of Yazaad Qureshi attacks Omkar to make him aware of his power, Daanish searches for Wazir, and Wazir keeps contacting him with untraceable methods to make him aware that he is watching his every move, Panditji sees that justice is not being served so he tries to take matter in his own hands, he tries to put an end to this misery, Daanish tries to stop him, but omkar’s fate gets to end in a tragic way. When a Rook sees his Pawn die right in front of his eyes, he destroys everyone who comes in his way. Daanish with the help of his friend (John Abraham) tracks down Qureshi and gets to know that whatever sacrifices Qureshi was living on, all of them were big lies, and that’s how a pawn’s provoked Rook brings down the King. There comes the biggest astonishing twist of this game, the Pawn actually kept his Rook under the hook with unbelievably unexpected moves, the Pawn turned out to be the mythical Queen who kept on provoking the Rook, to play with his full capabilities and potential. The dialogue from the film “Hey Little Pawn you’re the soul of chess, if you’re able to make right moves, one day you’ll become Wazir (The Queen Piece)” explains everything.
Along with Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s great conceptual story, Abhijat Joshi has worked on screenplay writing, which is successfully skillful, though it did had some errors, like it’s kind of impossible to throw a match stick from a long distance successfully in a single try with a single hand, which are easily ignorable but still an error is an error. The combination of Abhijat Joshi’s screenplay and Abhishek Deshpande’s Dialogue writing has made this film and incredibly enjoyable. Bejoy Nambiar has done a good work as a director with such big of a script, but I wouldn’t say it was the perfect direction for script like this, Nambiar could have done better.
Amitabh Bachchan after a long time has chosen a great film to work on, he for sure is one of the Bollywood Legends who will always be remembered even after their death, and his performance as Omkar Nath Dhar has proved that he still can act with joy.
The actor who has surprised me in this film is Neil Nithin Mukesh, who only did a cameo in the film as a mythical Wazir, the depth in his voice, made his evil character more dark and enjoyable to watch, I am delightful with the fact that he has done a great role and he actually was good enough to portray it perfectly.
Manav Kaul has disappointed me with his poor performance as Yazaad Qureshi, the character was way more, crucially political, Kaul should have made it energetic, unreliable.
Farhan Akhter and Aditi has a great chemistry as husband and wife on a screen, Farhan has been a struggling actor in the industry, the role Daanish actually demand a hardworking actor who could understand contrary situations of the same role, I appreciate that he has not failed to prove that he is hard working, and he covered the character real good. I’m glad that has this good character choosing sense.
The film’s story actually deserves 8.5/10 but due to poor performance by Manav and less hard work by Nambiar in direction I rate this film as 8.0/10 .
