Review – Haasil(2003)

Cast – Irrfan Khan, Jimmy Shergill, Hrishitaa Bhatt, Tinnu Anand, Murad Ali, Ashutosh Rana

Direction – Tigmanshu Dhalia

The game of politics begins when you thought it all ended. And by the time you understand what’s going on, your life has already been consigned to HELL.

Haasil is a story of politics played by different student level parties whose leaders plan to make it big by joining national politics later on in their life. The power of a student leader is well shown in the opening moments of the film when we see the students wish their leader while the vice-chancellor is giving a speech, thus showing the power of a student leader is more than the power of teachers or vice-chancellors of a university.

Between all these games of politics we have Annriudha (Jimmy Shergill), a theater artist who is in love with one of his co-actors, Niharika. (Hrishitaa Bhatt). But slowly even Annirudha starts falling into the trap of political scheming after making friends with Ranvijay Singh (Irrfan), leader of one of the parties. Very similar to Dileep Singh’s story in Gulaal, before he could visualize all this, his life is already in a mess.

The film shows some realistic political drama that happens normally in such regions. The threat, the blackmail, everything is very well shown in the film. If at all it lacked something, it was cusswords. I seriously believe if you make realistic films and that too in such UP regions, proper usage of cusswords work like magic in making the scenes look realistic. By proper I mean, it shouldn’t be too much that it gives a feeling that the director is forcing realism on the scene or wants to gather applause and laughs from one particular portion of the crowd.

The first half of the film is very good and well done with some light comic relives provided mostly by Ashutosh Rana in the tensed political situation.

The problem with Haasil is the climax of the film. In the climax of the film, the audience gets an impression that the game of politics that was being played by the political parties is over with the death of leaders of both the leading parties in that place. But in real life the game of politics never ends, so it is very important IMO to show in the end that even if both the gangs died, another party comes up and the game continues and will continue forever.

The music of the film is good and is the only thing that helps build up the romantic story in the film. ‘Aankhen Bhi Hoti Hai Dil Ki Zubaan’ is a wonderful composition.

The dialogs of the film too are very crisp, good and well written. And with such powerful actors, they are delivered brilliantly too.

Irrfan Khan pulls off a splendid performance. Easily his best performance from the ones I have seen. Ashutosh Rana’s performance was nothing short of mind blowing. His dialog delivery and body language were superb and fitted the role perfectly. Jimmy Shergill with this performance has only strengthened my view of him as an underrated actor in the industry. It’s sad to see an actor like him still struggling after being a part of some critically appreciated films like Maachis, A Wednesday, Yahaan, Mohabaatein(was a BO success) and also the Munnabhai films. Hrishitaa Bhatt too puts in a decent performance. And the supporting cast which includes Varun Badola, Tinu Anand, Murad Ali, the actor who distributes newspapers in film, etc does well to flesh out the film.

Overall, it is a decent watch with some very good performances. A more realistic ending and the use of appropriate language with some cusswords could have made it better.

7/10.