Saif Ali Khan steps into a distinct avatar of Michael Douglas in Baazaar, an Indian knock-off of Wall Street. Director Gauravv K. Chawla and screenwriters Parveez Sheikh, Aseem Arora and Nikhil Advani (the film is produced by Advani), design a fast-paced engaging enterprise that is, in hindsight, as soulless as its principal hero-cum-villain Shakun Kothari (Khan).
Sakhun, a Gujarati stock-manipulating mogul is from humble origins, similar to the story’s other hero Rizvan (Rohan Mehra) who, when the film starts, is a small-time stock broker in Allahabad. Rizvan wants to make it big, like his idol Sakhun, so he packs his bag, leaves dad and sister, joins the Mumbai stock-trading world and gets into a relationship with a fellow trader (Radhika Apte).
Sakhun and Rizvan meeting, working together and eventually facing off isn’t really the main selling point of Baazaar. In fact, one can guesstimate exactly what is going to happen when in the story on how it is panned out by Advani.
Baazaar’s one real gem is Khan, who makes his character deliciously evil — a remorseless bad guy and yet a loving family man who can’t see his two daughters cry (Chitrangada Singh plays Khan’s wife). With just this one layer, Khan adapts his performance scene-to-scene, bringing slight nuances to both his Gujarati accent and facial expressions.
Apte and Mehra are fairly good as well, but the film trades genuine character depth for the pumped-up ambience of the big-money world. Like a flashy stock in the stock-market, Baazaar entices with its flamboyancy but dips because of a lack of substance.
Published in Dawn, ICON, November 4th, 2018