Haider - A review

So beautifully has Vishal Bhardwaj adapted Shakespeare's Hamlet into Haider, using the troubled landscape of Kashmir as the backdrop. It's not your regular Bollywood masala flick. After a long time, I got to see such an intense and a really powerful script coming from Bollywood, which was also ably performed on-screen by its star cast. The director and the co-writer, Basharat Peer, should be lauded for making such a brave attempt at taking up the Kashmir issue and presenting an insider's view of the problems that the local kashmiris face like identity crisis or the torture of separatists and terror suspects in army camps etc. Earlier too, Bhardwaj had successfully adapted Macbeth as Maqbool (that came way back in 2003) and Othello as Omkara in 2006 and he had extracted brilliant performances from his star cast. This time too the actors in Haider have given their all.

Set in Kashmir, in 1995 when insurgency and militancy was at its peak, the story revolves around a young student named Haider (played by Shahid Kapoor), a young student studying poetry at Aligarh University, who returns home on getting to know that his doctor father had been arrested by the Indian army after a random raid but since then had been untraceable. He also gets very upset on finding out that his mother (played by Tabu) since his father's disappearance had got into a relationship with his uncle (his father's younger brother, played by Kay Kay Menon). Later on through Roohdar (Irrfan Khan in a special appearance) with whom his father was locked up in the same prison, when he comes to know about the conspiracy by his uncle and probably by his mother too for his father's death, he is shattered and seeks revenge from both.

Speaking of performances, well, almost everyone in that top-notch cast carry out their acts to perfection. As Haider, Shahid Kapoor has delivered his career's best acting performance, convincingly playing the role of a helpless and shattered son and then going to play the role of an obsessed son hell-bent on taking revenge from his uncle. Tabu too is brilliant as the hurt wife seeking love and peace. Kay Kay Menon too plays wonderfully well the role of the conniving uncle. Shraddha Kapoor, playing Haider's love interest and childhood friend in the movie oozes earnestness with her expressions. Even Irfan Khan puts up a powerful performance in the small role of Roohdaar and mesmerises you.

Though the movie felt tediously long at certain times but it is a solid and well-acted movie that deserves to be seen by one and all.