Making a film that’s inspired by a true incident has always been risky business. You either end up with a film that’s so good it becomes a phenomenon (rare) or you don’t do justice to the story or you try too hard (most of the time). There’s a lot that can go wrong in this genre of film, and when the story at hand is a juicy, popular one, as in the case of Tinu Suresh Desai’s Rustom, which released this weekend, the stakes are even higher.
This would be a good time for me to warn the readers that this review contains minor spoilers. I’ll try to avoid the big ones but since this is based on a true incident, I think you know how the story ends anyway.
The film, starring Akshay Kumar as the perfectly handsome and spotless-white-uniformed Navy Commander and Ileana D’Cruz as his beautiful but errant wife is a crime-drama-tragedy involving a power-hungry, revenge-seeking playboy and his murder with three gunshots, that shocked the nation. This film is inspired by the story of Kawas Nanavati, the Navy Commander who became a scandal in 1959.
The premise of the story is that Rustom Pavri, Navy Commander, shoots ultra-rich Vikram Makhija after learning that his wife has been having an affair with him (they’re all friends by the way) while he was away at a posting overseas, after which he surrenders himself to the police. What the police believed to be an open and shut case becomes an unbelievable intrigue, until they (and all of us) are led to wonder if there was more to the killing. Eventually Rustom pleads not guilty, pledges that he shot Vikram in self-defense and the case deepens, with the audience becoming privy to the Navy’s involvement in some serious corruption that somehow ties itself to why Rustom shot Vikram. The film ends in a happily-ever-after where the jury declares Rustom ‘not guilty’, he forgives his wife and they go on with their lives.
This film is one of those films that tried too hard. Maybe if the film wasn’t based on the story of Nanavati, it would have been a better film. Because it did work as a standalone story, to some extent. Since we do know that it is based on a real story though, we can’t help looking for historical accuracy, and in that department Rustom disappoints. It tries hard to paint Rustom as a ‘noble’ hero, who sacrificed his innocence to kill a man who blackmailed his wife to have an affair with him and who also is corrupting with the Navy. Hence in the film, it is justified that Vikram deserved to die.
The biggest problem that I find with this telling is that it focuses a bit too much on right and wrong, and in justifying things like Rustom’s decision to shoot Vikram and Cynthia’s affair with Vikram, and in doing so, removes all the emotion from the story. The actual story was so much more passionate than the film (Sylvia, Nanvati’s wife was in love with Prem Ahuja, and wanted him to marry her). When I read a bit more about the case, I was amused to find that there was a lot of intrigue added by the filmmakers, just for the justification. The film could have been easily based on the issues of Blitz, the tabloid that ran the stories of the Nanavati Scandal, that were instrumental in determining the public’s support for Nanavati and painting him as a wronged man who didn’t deserve to go to jail. These were the stories that shaped the jury’s decision too and they really show the power of the media in situations like these. The film portrayed that bit quite well. Needless to say, the jury system in India was discontinued after this case.
On the technical front, I think Rustom was a decent watch. The cinematography was simple and practical. The dialogue had some good moments of sparkle. The soundtrack was good too, but a few scenes could have done without the dramatic music. The sets and the costumes were well researched and created but here again, the filmmakers tried too hard because the set ended up looking too staged, like it was part of a magazine period shoot: the streets (and cars) of 1959 Bombay were a bit too clean.
The acting was decent with a few good characters. The comic reliefs though, could have been dumped because the film did not need them. Akshay Kumar plays a very composed Rustom which was nice, but I liked him better in the few moments when he was emoting. However, I hated the role and the acting of Esha Gupta, who played Vikram’s sister. She was made to look like too much of the bad guy (sexy, smoking woman in cleavage baring dresses with a red pout, evil eyes and a pawn lawyer), which again added to the justification of Rustom’s acquittal. Ileana D’Cruz’s Cynthia was also a much diluted character with very less agency in the film. Her whole involvement in the entire matter was because the men used her to get back at each other; quite different from the real Nanavati’s wife, who had a bigger part to play. I feel like all of the characters were created in such a way that we pity Rustom and celebrate him as a hero who ‘did the right thing in the wrong way’. This is also demonstrated in the ending of the film, which is different from what happened to Nanavati, who got some jailtime. The film’s best moments for me were the courtroom scenes, which were engaging, because of the dialogue and the way Rustom argues his own case. I think the film also sustained its mystery quite well until the climax.
In conclusion, I still enjoyed the film. I liked it until I came home and aggressively researched the real story of Nanavati and then decided that the film is one of those films that are more fiction than fact (I’m still not sure but it might be better that way). Maybe I’ll go to bed better tonight having decided that Rustom is not the story of Nanavati at all, but of a different man who committed a different crime for different reasons. Maybe it’s better I believe that the similarities are all just coincidences. Maybe that way I’d not feel so guilty for being made to be supportive towards a man who killed, regardless of everything, and still got away with it.