Review: A Thursday
Behzad Khambata’s vigilante thriller A Thursday, starring Yami Gautam Dhar is all in one: a hostage drama, thriller, newsroom drama, and the story of a trauma survivor.
A spiritual sequel to Neeraj Pandey’s A Wednesday, this film, written by Behzad and his co-writer Ashley Lobo deals with a ‘common man’s problem’. However, the fight and stakes this time are more personal, and social media is a central character.
Yami Gautam Dhar, plays Naina, a pre-school teacher who has taken 16 children hostage. As each hour goes by, she threatens to kill the children one by one, unless her demands are not met, including a tête-à-tête with the prime minister of the country.
Unlike A Wednesday, the key characters in this film are all women. Apart from Gautam Dhar playing Naina, Neha Dhupia plays a heavily pregnant cop Catherine Alvarez, Maya Sarao is Shalini, a television anchor, and Dimple Kapadia plays the Indian prime minister, Maya Rajguru.
It’s definitely wonderful to see women headlining films and narratives getting built around them. This is Yami’s first headlining, author-backed role, and she delivers quite a performance.
However, this film is filled with several loopholes. The first is the character of Naina herself. A Thursday is too afraid to make Naina actually dangerous. Until she goes rogue, she is overwhelmingly loved by both, parents and kids. Frenzied zoom-ins and close-ups accompany her sinister look. The extremely loud background music by Roshan Dalal and Kaizad Gherda does not help either.
The children in the pre-school aren’t fleshed out in any meaningful way either. And the acting also feels staged and over-exaggerated in some parts. Even actors like Atul Kulkarni give in to the loud exaggerated expressions.
Additionally, Neha Dhupia’s character of Catherine Alvarez, isn’t given the power and panache it deserves. Being a to-be mother, I thought she would’ve understood the gravity of the situation, before ordering any raid at the pre-school. However, the reverse happens.
Also, I would’ve loved to see Neha’s character, probably in a post-credit sequence, or the end, teaching her then-born child about what the film attempted to make a statement at. I think that would’ve been quite a powerful end, considering Alvarez is against Naina from the very beginning. (She is made to attend this case on her day-off)
It also looks like Hindi cinema in recent times is focussing on making news anchors the main characters. Maya Sarao plays Shalini, a television anchor whose sole aim is to get a prime time slot on television.
We are not new to this concept. Remember the very recent R Madhavan’s Dhamaka?
Kartik Aryan, plays an RJ who fights for prime time television, converses with a killer who blows up the sea link, and will not budge until his demands are met, including a talk with the chief minister of Maharashtra.
Quite similar to A Thursday, I thought. However, the points made are completely opposite.
Small elements throughout the film, I thought, are completely unnecessary. The birthday angle of Naina does not drive the plot forward in any way. Additionally, the police force takes hours to hunt down a criminal, cuts the internet of only one phone in the area, to block communication. However, a few scenes later, Naina is back on social media using hotspot from a maid’s phone. Shouldn’t the police have cut off the connection for the area instead, if they did not want her to use social media as a form of communication?
The screenplay attempts to reveal the rot in the system – everyone from the cops to media to bureaucrats and the public hungrily consuming the drama on social media is indicted. In one scene, the Prime minister also called Naina “system ka shikaar”. After all, we all have fallen prey to the system, and the screenplay shows just that. Naina is a Hindu, Catherine, a Christian, Javed Khan a Muslim, and everyone from parents, the judiciary, the media, the police, and the common civilians are caught in the rut.
Despite a rather predictable backstory, A Thursday redeems itself with its powerful emotional arc and social commentary in the second half. It touches upon a relevant issue that will resonate with women across the world. This may not be an edge-of-the-seat thriller that evokes paranoia or fear but it dares to form an opinion and make an important point, which alone is its victory. Khambata also cleverly makes ample use of social media to propel the story forward and it works. The film also makes an apt observation of clickbait journalism and the business of 'breaking news'.
