Sharma flips old formula in ‘Badmaash Company’
May 10, 2010
Starring Shahid Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Vir Das, Meiyang Chang
Yash Raj Films—one of India’s biggest production companies—has been criticized in recent years for the conservative cultural and family values in its films. But at the same time, it’s been intriguingly progressive in its characterization of women, and its new release Badmaash Company is the latest example.
One key scene in Badmaash says it all: While the main female character—an aspiring model named Bulbul (played by Anushka Sharma)—is making out with the male lead—a con artist named Karan (Shahid Kapoor)—in his car, she stops and says, “This isn’t serious, okay?” Surprised, he replies, “That’s my line.”
Women have been taking the hero’s lines in a lot of Yash Raj’s movies lately. Sharma made her debut in one—Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008)—in which she played a traditional girl who’s true to her heart, and it’s she, not her misguided husband, who has the climactic epiphany. Kapoor also starred in one—Dil Bole Hadippa (2009)—in which he was sidelined by a cross-dressing, cricket-playing heroine who stole the show. In Badmaash, Sharma plays a sharp, sexy woman who makes no apologies for her boldness—exemplified when a modeling agent propositions her and she stabs him in the thigh with a pair of scissors to teach him a lesson.
The film is set in 1994—before India liberalized its economy and removed enormous taxes on imported goods. Back then, foreign merchandise cost a fortune and black marketeers profited handsomely from low supply and high demand. Karan—who comes from a precariously middle-class family—enlists Bulbul and his friends Zing (Meiyang Chang) and Chandu (Vir Das) in a cunning con to evade import taxes and get rich quick. They get away with it and make a bundle, but the government abolishes the high tariffs, putting an end to their swindle. So they move to the U.S. and pull off a similar but less clever con in New York City.
And that’s where the film stops being a caper and focuses on the moral conflict, which is the heart of Hindi cinema. The now-rich gang goes to Las Vegas and descends into decadence in the West’s Sodom and Gomorrah. Zing, who was a functional alcoholic before, becomes a raging, out-of-control drunk who abuses his new girlfriend, a Vegas showgirl. Chandu, who was a harmless horn-dog in the past, starts banging hookers two at a time in casino restroom stalls. And Karan, who was merely a cocky punk at the outset, develops some serious delusions of grandeur. Bulbul, on the other hand, regains her moral bearings as she’s horrified by her friends’ behavior.
Karan’s comeuppance is a given, but the manner of his redemption is not. Once he’s alienated from everyone, it’s the knight, not the damsel, who’s in distress, and Bulbul saves him by reconnecting him to what he’s lost, including himself.
Badmaash Company is rated Worth Watching.
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