Black & White

Cast :	Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah, Anurag Sinha, Aditi Sharma
Director :	Subhash Ghai
Producer :	Subhash Ghai
Genre :	Drama
Release Date :	7-3-2008

Synopsis

Unaid (Anurag), a brain washed jehadi from Afghanistan, is sent to India as a suicide bomber to create mayhem on India’s Independence Day in the capital। With his new false identity as Numair, a Gujarat communal riots victim, he consciously befriends an Urdu literature professor Rajan Mathur (Anil Kapoor). He looks at Mathur as his perfect gateway to procuring a VIP pass for the Independence Day celebrations at the Red Fort. Mathur, who stays with his activist wife Roma (Shefali) in Delhi's Chandni Chowk, welcomes Numair to his house and makes him a part of his family. Though Roma's instinct makes her suspect Numair and his actions, he manages to convince her in due course. In his fifteen day stay with the loving Mathur family and experiencing great warmth and affection from the people staying around them, the fanatic in Numair starts undergoing gradual change. He gets in an emotional dilemma whether to go ahead with his mission or not. But as the D-Day finally nears he decides to go according to his plan. What happens on the mission day and what changes it brings in the lives of the Mathur couple and Numair forms the rest of the film!

StarBoxOffice.com Review

Acting: Debutante Anurag exhibits his good talent with his brooding, intense act playing the cold blooded terrorist. He succeeds in showcasing his anguish and the steady change in his beliefs very well. Anil Kapoor yet again proves his versatility. Shefali is effective in a small yet powerful role. Aditi is hardly there. Milind Gunaji is menacingly good. Veteran theatre artist Habib Tanvir seen onscreen after a long time is a treat to watch.

Direction: The showman for the first time changing his tracks from popular entertainers to serious meaningful cinema has outdone himself in all the departments. There are no popular Ghai touches visible in any frame yet he succeeds in delivering the desired impact. He deserves to be lauded for his courage and risk taking for attempting such a genre and not ending up making a dark and depressing film.

Script: One of the main USP of Black and White is its good story by Varon B K Sharma which has been worked out well by Ghai and his team into a multi layered screenplay. His penned dialogues are well worded as well. Amongst the most effective scenes in terms of writing and handling are the initial reels portions showing Afghanistan and its terror camps, Shefali's murder, Anil's subsequent break down and the climax confrontation between Anurag and Milind Gunaji. However, the romantic track between Aditi and Anurag, the songs woven around them could have totally been avoided as also a few sequences in the climax do bring the graph of the film down a bit. But nevertheless, Black and White does make for a good watch for connoisseurs of meaningful cinema.