Hadh (2001)
Starring: Jackie Shroff, Sharad Kapoor, Suman Raganatham, Kiran Kumar
Director: Thampy Kannamthanam
Music Director: Viju Sha
Synopsis: execrable rot which almost defies all description due to its sheer awfulness
Reviewed by: Faiz Khan

A marriage is taking place as the credits roll. A young boy watches solemnly and then, without any explanation whatsoever, the faceless bride and groom are seen driving away with the child—no more than ten years old—running desperately behind the car, screaming for his mother. He manages to hurl a stone at the departing vehicle, smashing the windscreen, but is ultimately abandoned. We have no idea why.

The boy then helps an escaping criminal, Haji Baba, for no apparent reason other than that, in today's cinema, it seems perfectly logical to assist criminals and lie to the police. Haji Baba promptly takes the child under his wing, renames him Vishwa and adds him to the collection of strays he has already gathered around him. At almost the same moment, a baby is discovered abandoned on his doorstep. Naturally, Haji Baba adopts him too and names him Shiva.

Cut to the next scene: two men stride away from a blazing inferno in the background. They are now the grown-up Vishwa (Jackie Shroff) and Shiva (Sharad Kapoor), Haji Baba's trusted right-hand men. Such is Haji Baba's faith in Vishwa that he decides to hand control of his empire over to him. This naturally enrages the other adopted sons, particularly Dalal (Kiran Kumar), who murders Haji Baba and frames Vishwa for the crime.

Five years later, Vishwa returns to avenge the injustice that has been done to him. He now has a wife (Ayesha Jhulka) and a son, and with Shiva's assistance sets about systematically destroying Dalal's criminal empire. One confrontation follows another, and so the film lumbers on from episode to episode with little sense of direction.

Eventually, having exhausted whatever momentum the story possessed, the screenplay introduces a retired Police Commissioner (Vikram Gokhale), who is called back into service to restore law and order to Mumbai. He returns to tackle both Dalal and Vishwa, only to discover that Vishwa is in fact the abandoned child from the opening scenes. Vishwa, meanwhile, saves the Commissioner from one of Dalal's elaborate murder plots.

So why exactly did Vishwa's mother abandon him all those years ago?

Cue yet another flashback. We discover that she had given birth to an illegitimate child and was forced by her father either to marry another man or watch him murder both her son and himself. Convincing stuff this! So she marries, abandons her child and spends the rest of her life pining for him.

The problem is that nothing about this makes the slightest sense. The husband she marries appears to know all along that she has a son and even lays an extra place at the dinner table for him every single day. One suspects he would probably have accepted the child had she simply brought him home. Stranger still, she never has any more children, meaning her tragic sacrifice seems entirely pointless. And whatever became of her tyrannical father? The film conveniently forgets about him altogether. Why this poor woman had to endure decades of misery is beyond comprehension.

I have absolutely no idea why this film was ever made. There is nothing remotely original about it and even less that is genuinely interesting. I had never heard of the director before and, judging by this thoroughly lame effort, I doubt he will be troubling Hindi cinema very often again.

Jackie Shroff sleepwalks through the leading role while nobody else leaves much of an impression. Suman Ranganathan is present largely for glamour and dance routines, Sharad Kapoor is completely wasted, and Ayesha Jhulka virtually disappears from the film altogether. In fact, whatever happened to her by the end? Nobody in the screenplay seems remotely interested, and I doubt the audience will be either. Any theories would be welcome.

The music is dreadful, with not a single memorable tune to be found.

Released quietly with little publicity or fanfare, this one looks destined to be a crushing flop.

What a film to release for Eid!