Netflix Saturdays : Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota ( Hindi Movie Review)

Netflix Saturdays: I pledge to write a movie/series recommendation every Saturday, cherry-picking from the vast collection of Movies/TV series playing on Netflix. Well, if you were planning to binge-watch away your weekend in front of the TV/Laptop/Hand held device, hopefully my review(s) help you make an informed choice! Happy Flixing, fellas.

Trust Netflix to come up with weird recommendations that turn out to be runaway winners! Whatever your data scientists are doing to improve that recommendation engine algorithm, more power to you fellas [ Sorry! couldn't resist that dig as I do analytics for a living myself ]

So Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota (MKDH) just randomly came up on my Netflix list and without any inkling, I just started watching it yesterday night. You know, there are some movies that convince you in the first few frames that you are in for something special? MKDH was one of those.

The first scene has a young man in a maroon track suit facing down a set of angry muscled men in grey safari suits in an abandoned construction compound, somewhere in Mumbai. A disembodied neutral voice in the background makes observations with almost child like wonder about these running men and why do they run in anger. Then how comical would it be if one of them tripped. And one of them just does that, falling headlong, tripping.

And then Surya, the young man explodes into action, sailing into the air and flipping around with powerful roundhouse kicks, turning into a one-man wrecking machine Hulk sweeping through the crowd. In slow-mo. While the background voice makes pertinent observations about the proceedings, with that tone of child like curiosity intact. But in the middle of a well executed somersault, the young man realises that he is dehydrated and he stops and falls.

The irreverence and the stylish cinematography was arresting. I knew I had to watch the rest of this movie. Who was this special young man? What is his story? Who are the goons he is fighting?

Mard ko Dard Nahin Hota (Man who knows no pain) is an absolute blast - A riot of a movie, called the Desi Deadpool, is made perhaps as a homage to the kung-fu greats of Bruce Lee [ There's even a direct cheeky one-liner about Bruce Lee's death at the age of twenty seven, of how he would have attained the status of a legend!] and also the Honk Kong martial arts doyen Stephen Chow [ King Fu Hustle! ] it follows the life of this special young man named Surya. Born as a child with congenital insensitivity to pain and brought up on a steady diet of martial arts movies and the trippy Bollywood movies of the 70's and 80's [ Both of which, I suspect is basically the love affair of the director Vasan Bala himself, who has probably poured all that love into this absolutely electrifying action comedy caper] by his dauntless Ajoba  (Marathi for grandfather played by the charming and effortless actor that is Mahesh Manjrekar) after his mom passes away in an unfortunate accident. His dad ( a bumbling timid man played to perfection by Jimit Trivedi) feels overprotective about Surya and hence wants to bind him down, so that he doesn't hurt himself or get hurt as the boy experiments with pain, just to figure out what is wrong with his body. His clever grandfather teaches him to deal with pain through courage, tomfoolery (say "Ouch" whenever someone hits you, even though you cannot feel it!) and a game-face for life.

Surya grows up a nerd, addicted to martial arts and briefly has a big bonding with his school time pal Supri, another firecracker who will fight the world, for Surya. But cannot stand up for herself against her drunk abusive father. Supri and Surya are forced away from each other after a bad mishap that involves her father. Surya watches a video documentary called 100-man fight about a local Kung fu master called Kung Fu Mani ( Gulshan Devaiah, brilliant, bringing all his manic energy and intensity) and in a crossing of fates, Supri meets Master Mani and becomes one of his best students, a Ninja black belt. The plot really takes off after the introduction of Master Mani's evil psychotic twin brother Jimmy who resents Mani despite the fact that he's grown to be poor kung-fu master with hardly any students and an addiction to alcohol problem. The rivalry between Mani and Jimmy becomes the key tension point for the whole plot as Surya, now a young man, meets his idol and then dedicates his life to bringing back the chain that Jimmy forcibly took away from Mani, a legacy from their Kung Fu master father.

Well, the plot is nothing to write home about. This isn't about saving the world. Nevertheless it is a story about saving oneself. Surya's character is written with so much aplomb and played with fire and brimstone and a lot of heart by Abhimanyu Dasani endeared himself to me, with his child like innocence and take on the world. Where everything is black and white. And it is his life's mission to burn away the evil in this world. Having grown up in isolation, his social awkwardness and his self absorbed personality of a nerd but who is conscious about the evils of the world, is brought out very well by Abhimanyu's nuanced acting. He moulds himself well into this role and I think, he's definitely a talent to watch out for. Action is phenomenal and the boy applies himself to the kinetically charged fight scenes so well.


But for me, the surprise element and also the biggest Laxmi-bomb, so to say, was Radhika Madan. Playing the role of Supri, Suray's girlfriend. A troubled child from young days, she is overly empathetic to the grief around her and wants to always save someone from doom. Radhika obviously essays the somber part of Supri's character well enough but it's the excellently choreographed stunt sequences that Radhika really turns into exhibitions of martial arts badassery! A fluid sense of movement, displaying excellent kinesthetics - am sure, her fight scenes had the audience hyperventilating with excitement. She stands shoulder to shoulder with Abhimanyu in this mad, silly comic-book homage movie, without missing a beat. The third of the trio, Gulshan Devaiah is perhaps the old hand here, The hand of experience and it shows in his manic portrayal of Austin-Powers styled sibling rivalry that becomes the raison d'être for the movie plot.  The songs and the background score are stand-out phenomenal and Vasan Bala's direction [ Where have you been all along! I mean who gets away by making a Kamal/Rajni joke dude and then following that with a George Lucas reference. There are movie references / Easter eggs galore here!] along with the smart movie edits deftly bring out the best of this madcap dramedy, paying homages to superhero and martial arts great movies. There are certain backstories that drag a bit but overall, I personally felt that not many scenes were wasted. Just surrender yourself to this silly caper and you will soar.

Overall, if you liked Kill Bill or Game of Death and if you like your movies with a heady dose of action comedy and you have always thirsted for something in Bollywood on those lines, Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota is a paean, an open love letter to super heroism, Bruce Lee and perhaps, Tarantino. Definitely watchable!