Thar review – Anil Kapoor’s violent cop thriller puts the punch in Rajasthan
about 3 years in The guardian
There are hints of Sergio Leone and Cormac McCarthy in this Rajasthan-set mystery starring the actor and his sonRaj Singh Chaudhary is the Indian actor, screenwriter and now director who has developed his career under the mentorship of Anurag Kashyap, the creator of the mob classic Gangs of Wasseypur. Chaudhary has now made a punchy, nihilistic, western-style thriller, co-written with Kashyap, with hints of Sergio Leone and the borderland paranoia of Cormac McCarthy.The setting is Rajasthan in the 1980s, but not the Rajasthan beloved of tourists and attenders of the Jaipur literature festival: this is the vast, forbidding and starkly beautiful Thar desert between India and Pakistan. Movie legend Anil Kapoor turns in a likable, authoritative performance as a veteran police inspector called Singh whose beat covers the remote village of Munabao. As he nears retirement, Singh has to deal with a sudden incursion of banditry and violence from drug runners bringing opium across the border from Pakistan, but also strange and macabre acts of violence that don’t have any obvious motivation. Continue reading...