A review on Bollywood crime thriller feature length film, ‘Mom’ (2017). The Production Houses are MAD Films and Third Eye Pictures while its Distributors are Zee Studio and Sridevi Productions.
+ Crew
- Written & Directed by Ravi Udyawar
- Cinematography by Anay Goswamy
- Co-Written by Girish Kohli (Screenplay & Story) & Kona Venkat Rao (Story)
- Edited by Monisha R. Baldawa
- Produced by Boney Kapoor, Sunil Manchanda, Naresh Agarwal, Mukesh Talreja & Gautam Jain
+Note
It is a rape-revenge thriller film. This film is inspired by Hollywood fame film ‘Eye for an Eye’ (1996) where Sally Field who plays the mom’s role in as protagonist. The first remake by Bollywood was ‘Dhusman’ (1998) of Kajol Devgan playing a double role.
It was announced in early 2016 that Sridevi would be starring next in Boney Kapoor’s woman-centric home-production titled Mom to be directed by Ravi Udyawar. Nawazuddin Siddiqui was cast in an important role in the film while the actor revealed that it was a dream, come true for him to work with Sridevi.
The Music is composed by AR Rahman. Mom marked Sridevi’s 300th film appearance.
+ Main Cast
- Sridevi as Devki Sabarwal
- Sajal Ali as Arya
- Abhimanyu Singh as Jagan
- Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Daya Shankar Kapoor / DK
- Akshaye Khanna as Mathew Francis
xxxxxxxxx
+ Supportive Cast
- Vikas Verma as Charles Diwan
- Adarsh Gourav as Mohit
- Adnan Siddiqui as Anand
- Pitobash as Baburam
+ Plot
Devki Sabarwal (mother) acts as a vigilante, who sets out to avenge her daughter’s rapists.
+ High Points
i – Sridevi as Devki Sabarwal (mother’s role). After a long time, we as audience welcome her with love and support to see her give ‘A’ graded performance on big screen. She is truly a remarkable actress where the time stand stills when she is giving her performance. In fact, any praises would fall short on playing out her delicate, emotional character.
The key scene to watch her performance of top notch is when she visits the hospital and is informed of sexual assault of her daughter.
ii – Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a low earning, honest private detective. Such a wonderful actor he is where everyone in the audience anticipated him to perform up to their expectations which he did brilliantly. His off / on humor punch lines made people laugh all of a sudden. The audience simply loved to watch his scenes with keen interest.
iii – Able to shoot bold scenes without showing vulgarity; kept at bay for the people to use their imagination.
iv – The consequences after committing a heinous crime that is raping someone and to see the trauma, how the victim goes through it especially the victim’s family tries to cope up with the society they live in without getting any justice — we as audience see the behavior and the temperament of the victim in such cases and imagine it as to what if to be in their place.
v – Some of the dialogues are very well said, well written. Such as:
Devki: ‘DK shb, hur jaga khuda nahi hotha hai’
DK : ‘Ha, jubi to usne Maa di hai’
Or
Arya: Usne kaha ‘Apni Maa ko bulaa’!
Or
DK: ‘Mard? Tu mard thori hai. Mard rape nahi khartha hai… Suaar khartha hai’.
+ Low Points
i – The story is actually very simple, rape-revenge thriller film. The suspense is quite low as the film is very straight forward with predictable outcomes, (mostly). I believe that if the film maker is able to achieve the primary objectives from his film then he could focus on achieving the secondary objectives as inserting bigger twists in a plot like this.
ii – A number of unconvincing scenes such as Devki so easily entering people homes, apartments to do her mischievous work while the victim is depending on his CCTV as only security option. She able to visit the patient at the hospital whereas no police / security is available outside the room as this is on-going police case.
iii – Its ending gave a typical Bollywood signature. All this time Mathew is looking for hard evidence to arrest the vigilante but now everything suddenly changes for him. Instead, now he encourages the culprit to … R-E-A-L-L-Y?!
iv – No / hardly any proper vocal songs available in the film.
+ Overall
At the start of the film, Mom is very uncomfortable to watch as it tends to be that way but then we see the consequences of committing such an act of evil in a desperate attempt with perfect performances, especially Sridevi and Nawazuddin who melted themselves entirely into their characters… physically and emotionally.
Rate: 3.50 out of 5 stars
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