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	Releasing On - 25-04-2024

Drector: Ahishor Solomon

Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Randeep Hooda, Sharat Saxena, Vipin Sharma, Shernaz Patel and Elena Kazan

   There’s a Spanish film from 2002 called Box 507 and it has too many similarities with John Day to be a mere coincidence. So the film isn’t original material. That’s okay. There are more quote unquote inspired movies in Hindi cinema than we would want to admit. But the problem here is everything good about the movie, barring the stellar performances by Naseeruddin Shah and Randeep Hooda, suggest that debut director Ahishor Solomon has promise for the future. But if he’s just slavishly picked up scenes from the original, then what sort of promise is this?

   Naseeruddin Shah plays John Day, a regular middle-aged bank manager. His life suffers a tragic blow when his daughter dies in an accidental fire at a camping site. And then things get worse, when he helps a bunch of amateur thugs rob his bank as his wife is their hostage at home. She ends up brain dead and John Day is left juggling with the unfortunate aftermath. The robbery gives John evidence of a mobster-builder-cop evil nexus and also provides leads about the death of his daughter. So this average Joe turns into a vigilante to clean the corrupt system singlehandedly. His main nemesis is the Hannibal Lecter inspired crooked cop played by Randeep Hooda. Sample this. Randeep force feeds a guy three plates of biryani and a few 500 rupee notes and then later he bites out the tongue of another guy tied to a chair. If that sounds crazy, it is just that. Both Hooda and Shah at some point display artistic skills for gory gruesome killings. It’s the visceral visuals that add a shock horror twist to John Day. You’d normally expect such scenes in Korean revenge dramas.

   Despite having the Box 507 DVD at his disposal, director Solomon misses a few cues in compiling his scenes. John Day’s personal trauma is established with the loss of his daughter and wife. But all of those scenes and shots are amateurishly cut and very choppy. A thing Solomon does well is to include Biblical references to juxtapose John Day’s anger and dilemma. Between that and Sharat Saxena’s soul searing dialogue, the film musters up some dramatic depth.

   All said and done, the reason any of this works is because of the actors. Naseeruddin Shah has spent close to five decades honing his skills and he’s not going to slip up anytime soon. In fact, he even excels in physical scenes. He’s out sprinting younger mob guys, on occasions even brawling with them. The veteran breezily pulls off such scenes. Randeep Hooda on the other hand is pure menace. His character is intense, psychotic and totally deranged. The actor is at home shifting through the many shades of his character. Of course even his grey character has a silver lining and that only adds to the impact.

   John Day is a half-baked effort with sporadic moments of brilliance and leaves you with an aftertaste of what could have been. See it strictly for its performances.