Not many may be aware that great director Gauravv K. Chawla made his directorial debut with the 2018 stock market thriller, Baazaar. The plot of this failed venture spins around a young, ambitious small-townie heading towards capturing the glamorous essence of Mumbai along with the sole intention of working with his role model, who is described as a shrewd businessman with a rags-to-riches story that begins at a very young age with smuggling diamonds on crowded express trains. When these two opposite worlds strike together, the distinction between a 100-meter sprint and a marathon race is debated upon, numbers are redefined, immoral deals are struck, stocks are purchased and sold off and fortunes are established and erased.
The movie can be described as a rich mélange of aristocracy and the wicked appearance of corruption and insider trading prevailing in the stock market business. Bazaar is driven by a rock-solid and electrifying performance from Saif Ali Khan; however, it is backed by its much predictable storyline where he loses all of his finances, efforts as well as his family. Khan seems to take his character quite seriously.
With that said, he invests deeply into the disarming charm and suave steeliness of his role alongside his classy acting skills. It is noticed that Khan adorns on the role of a Gujarati tycoon and the little hints of Gujarati in the dialogue delivery as well as the setting makes sporadic appearances and are a complete sight for sore eyes.
This Rohan Mehra and Chitrangada Singh starrer swoops into a world that is comparatively alike to that of Jordan Belfort, the real life-inspired anti-hero of Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013). Baazaar very intricately manages to portray the world of stock brokers, power brokers, wealthy businessmen, industrialists and a host of influential and powerful individuals.
Today, it is a known fact that we reside in a world where committing fraud is considered as a common deed, that most of the people turn a blind eye to it nearly all the time. Shakun Kothari (Khan) plays the market through means foul than air and believes that greed is good and that money is power, above all other aspects.
On the other hand, strong-headed Rizwan Ahmed (debutant Rohan Mehra) idolizes the devil and wants to follow him into the deep dark sea of stock trading. The latter is inevitably pulled into the hustle and bustle of the stock market and while stuck in this fashionable chaos, loses his moral and emotional significance. This conveys the idea insinuatingly that the more he sails into the predicament, the more venomous the game grows for him.
The script writing by Aseem Arora and Parveez Shaikh is wonderful, but the duo could have avoided a few loopholes. The movie makes use of a plethora of stock market terminologies and displays multifaceted ideas like fraud trading and financial manipulation with ease. It is not very common to see an edgy story unfold in completely new settings in the Bollywood film industry.
There is absolutely no doubt that had Baazaar been a little less slavishly derivative; it could have generated higher portions of profit. This certainly explains why it failed to carve its mark on its targeted box office revenue or even receive any glorifying and handsome accolades.
According to my way of analysing this moving picture, I believe that the ingénue’s blossoming storyline failed to arouse the energy or tension that it required in order to maintain the same rate of progress as Shakun’s guileful techniques. Kothari is devoid of a personality that makes heads turn every time he comes into play. On the contrary, plenty of screen time is allotted to his potential co-actor but I guess, there is only that much impression he can handle for a long-drawn drama.
This dissonance between the two main leads strands that crisscross at crucial points disrupts the film’s flow.
It is only fair to say that it does not bode well that Baazaar concludes with several ambiguous facts as well as inaccurate details. It is as if the scriptwriters and the director have taken the audience for being ignorant, which is not a very smart business motion. Nevertheless, we eagerly anticipate viewing more of the director’s tremendously profound talent of filmmaking soon.
Written by – Miloni Chheda
Edited by- Aishani Mishra
