Laal Kaptaan

I havent posted a review for 7 -8 years.. This forced my hand. First of all Saif may not be important at the Box office but boy is he doing some good stuff. This movie completely bowled me over.. An absolute masterpiece. Woh Zakhm hi kya jo dikh jaye..

I rate it 5/5.. Pros: 1.) Narrative is Gripping 2.) Strong Character Work 3.) Great Direction and Screenplay 4.) Good Story and interesting plot points 5.) Great acting by every actor

Cons: 1.) It should've been a Series, they should've stretched this movie by more 3 hours and dwelled upon the characters a bit more because they were really interesting. This could've killed as a TV series, better than sacred games and any other recent popular TV show. 2.) Theater audience is not mature enough to handle this movie, people should go and watch Race 3 and Housefull if you didn't like this movie!

Finally, we get to see our Cinema experimenting outside traditional boundaries.

People who didn't like this movie will probably hate iconic films such as good bad and ugly, taxi driver or raging bull, but these films are showcased as examples of fine film making around the world.

IMO, Lal Kaptaan is an extremely well made film that deserves it's recognition in our industry. Indian cinema needs more creative projects like this, or else we will be stuck with another four installments of mindless "Dhoom's" and "War's"!

8/10

Plot: Around 1789 a Naga sadhu (Saif Ali Khan) who works as a bounty hunter gets wind of Rehmat Khan, a man he has been trying to find and kill for 25 years.

A Naga sadhu (Saif Ali Khan) Addressed in the film as Gossain has built a legend by bounty hunting. Some even calls him a ghost. He covers huge land and difficulties to find his target Rehmat Khan. The film revolves around the question who is he and why is he obsessed with this particular target.

Laal Kaptaan starts with a bang. We get to see some cool actions and amazing dialogues. Saif looks awesome in his Naga sadhu avatar. The whole first part is awesome. I enjoyed it.

The best part of the film is the tracker played by Deepak Dobriyal. His character is amazing so is his performance. His catch phrase is Howdodoo! For few gold coins he can track anyone. If this was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, he would be the ugly.

For this type of film to succeed incredible acting is required, Deepak Dobriyal did and for the most part Saif Ali Khan did it too. The young man in beginning awaiting to be hanged was amazing too. Rest of the cast did not add much.

I found the music to be great as well, it accompanied with some amazing visual.

The self destruction of Rehmat Khan begs the question how he managed to live for so many years. The character of our Bad guy is incoherent and feels dead like the eyes of the actor who played it. But the worst actor credit goes to the widow (Zoya Hussain). It is a pain to see her ruining a superb film. Her character had to had the most depth but she ruined it. A cardboard has more emotional range. In the second part many unnecessary things were shown. And the film felt long.

I enjoyed the first half immensely also the climax. It is an enjoyable film. Also some of the dialogues are very impactful. Over all a very well written film.

Yes, there is revenge in the movie but the plot that leads is something different. Watch it if you like to watch different movies. The plot starts very slow but ends with thrill.