Review of Issaq (2013) by Regan R — 11 Sep 2013

It's remarkable that filmmakers still find Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as a great source material to fiddle with. This fascination ranges from psychedelic musicals to animations featuring gnomes. But Issaq, from Manish Tiwary, comes off as a miserably offensive adaptation of the timeless play.

Set in Varanasi, the feuding families here are the Mishras and the Kashyaps. Both families want to take control over the illegal sand-mining business and are least bothered about the law when it comes to guns and murders. When Rahul Mishra (Prateik Babbar) falls for Bacchi Kashyap (Amyra Dastur), a doomed romance flickers. A mix of blood, gore and violence is then stoked on the banks of Ganges.

It feels like Manish Tiwary skipped all of his rewriting sessions in the haste to finish the film. The narrative aimlessly meanders with abrupt plot twists and a loud background score that completely work against the atmosphere and the flow of the film. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet seems less obvious as Tiwary wastes too much time on cramming in lighter moments instead of presenting a focused love story. All the characters feel like aspiring stand-up comedians because every one chips in with witty one-liners which start to become unfunny after few minutes. There are also these surreal sequences that pop up regularly in the movie. With a cheap VFX patch-up work, the rawness of Varanasi is lost in the film's look and the actors' forced accent do little to make us believe in them.

Issaq may have been conceived as a political satire with an edge towards a generation old fable but it takes itself too lightly. Just like a regular Indian soap-opera, it has no point to prove.