Highway

Recently in a chat show Anurag Kashyap said what he envy the most in Imtiaz Ali’s films is the romance that he creates on celluloid. Along with a delightful romance, Imtiaz has smartly included his way of reacting to certain ideologies and issues to make his new film Highway an enjoyable and memorable movie.

The story revolves around the unplanned kidnap of Veera Tripathi who is the daughter of a big industrialist. On an interesting knot Veera starts to enjoy this particular time of her life as she was getting that much needed freedom. Both Veera and Mahabir ( the kidnapper) has their own issues and the film shows you how they help each other within those emotional insecurities.

Depicting the problems of your protagonists in a less cheesy way so as to make the viewer feel for their tears is something difficult and Imtiaz Ali has managed to succeed in this by extracting the best out of his lead pair and also by presenting those heartbreaks through well written dialogues. The character of Veera is an odd one and as we along with Mahabir travels with her, we get to know the character more deeply. The freedom Veera gets from this road trip and how she becomes a healing factor for Mahabir who misses his mother terribly was conceived very nicely.

Undoubtedly the star of the show was Alia Bhatt who was outstanding as the lonely and caged character who reacts to her freedom in a really different way. Couple of lengthy uncut shots were in the film where Veera releases that heavy baggage of torture she has faced in life and I must say that for an actress who is doing just her second film, this was fabulous. Another spot on casting was Randeep Hooda who also delivered a great performance. Really loved that scene where the stubborn Mahabir goes emotional remembering his mother. Those supporting actors in the kidnapping gang were also good.

Imtiaz Ali is that writer-director package and the package once again delivered a quality output. As I said there is that rebel feel in both Veera and Mahabir which we saw in Jordan too. I liked the way he structured Veera’s character. That slight madness of Veera really helped the transformation of the character. Some well written dialogues are there in the film. Edits were really good. Excellent cinematography. Madras Mozart’s songs are already a great hit. Minimal usage of background score enhances the real feel of the movie.

Overall Highway succeeds in creating rooted characters. With a surprisingly stunning performance from Alia Bhatt the chances of you not feeling the sadness and anger of Veera and Mahabir is very less. I am giving 4/5 to this patakha guddi.