Vadh, directed by Neena Gupta and Sanjay Mishra – both veterans and highly skilled actors – is a riveting criminal thriller that keeps you hooked from start to finish.
The narrative deals with moral and ethical dilemmas, greed and charity, crime, and the resulting guilt or lack thereof. What happens when a peaceful couple is pushed to their breaking point? How can one get rid of a nasty goon that harasses, blackmails, and intimidates every night, unleashing physical and mental torture? How does one justify murdering someone?
In the city of Gwalior, an old couple lives with their sole child, who works overseas. The issue is that both elderly parents are continually pressured for the payback of a loan made to send their son overseas for further studies, and they are always waiting for their ungrateful NRI son Guddu (Diwakar Kumar) to bring them money.
Shambhunath Mishra (Sanjay Mishra) and his wife Manju (Neena Gupta) lead a middle-class existence filled with love, respect, and admiration for one another. Their days are filled with peace, calm, and good humor, except when a local goon humiliates them regularly, using their house for sex with his partners and treating them like puppets in their own home, to be at his beck and call.
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Because the internet was only available at cyber cafes in the 1990s, every time the couple dials a video call abroad, they burn through over 300 rupees for a few minutes. Even yet, all the money and work invested is for naught since the kid is a nasty, selfish, and ungrateful young man who sees his parents’ need for money as simply another reason to make demands. Shambhunath Mishra trained his son to be an engineer and then took out a large debt to send him abroad for additional education, which he has yet to repay.
The loan sharks keep coming home and tormenting the parents, and all they want from their kids is money to repay the loan. When this fails and the thug Prajapati Pandey (Saurabh Sachdeva) goes to every length to humiliate and degrade them, Mishra, an otherwise quiet and gentle guy, takes matters into his own hands and murders the thug in cold blood. He disposes of the body and destroys any residual evidence. The story then zooms inside the thoughts of the two main characters to investigate the interrelationship between morality, righteousness, and justice.
Vadh, co-directed by Jaspal Singh Sandhu and Rajeev Barnwal, draws the audience in deeper and deeper, frame after frame. The setting, the people, and the storyline as a whole are as realistic as it gets.
The editing is excellent, and the story flows well. The story revolves around four main characters: the distressed parents, the thug, and the inspector Shakti Singh (Manav Vij), who becomes suspicious of Shambhunath and attempts to frame him for murder. Except he won’t since he knows Mishra’s intentions were not bad, but the circumstances pushed him over the edge. How the character of Guddu is depicted appears to be a little unrealistic.
It appears far-fetched to see a young man totally wash his hands of his parents at a time when they are suffering as a result of his own goals and ambitions. ‘Beti hoti toh phir baat hi kuch aur hoti (If we had a daughter, it would have been a different tale),’ Shambunath laments at one point.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard a story like this, as Baghban and Andhadhun have come before. However, this is the film at its most genuine and gritty. Vadh is a promising picture that should not be overlooked for that reason alone.
