Bastar – The Naxal Story is a film about how the Naxalite movement has wreaked havoc in the country. The makers depict how the Maoists function and how they have been harassing and even torturing locals for something as basic as unfurling the tricolour. A few scenes are extremely disturbing. Sadly, the makers don’t make good use of the opportunity. The film is haphazardly made and hence, one never gets connected with the goings-on or with the journey of the brave officer and the widow. A few developments are not explained properly while some of them are plain silly. A character, for instance, coolly sneaks out of a car though it is surrounded by hundreds of enemies from all sides! An office is presumably absolved of all charges because of her monologue, despite using words like ‘ghanta’ in front of the seniors. These scenes don’t match with the claims of it being a realistic film. Speaking of performances, Adah Sharma, who did quite well in The Kerala Story, is quite stiff here. Indira Tiwari leaves a mark and in fact, she dominates the climax. Vijay Krishna (Lanka Reddy) is aptly cast. Subrat Dutta (Milind Kashyap) shines in a cameo. Shilpa Shukla (Neelam Nagpal), as always, is dependable. Yashpal Sharma (Utpal Trivedi) does well but goes over the top in the beginning scenes. Raima Sen (Vanya Roy) repeats her The Vaccine War act. Anangsha Biswas, Gopal Singh (Shrivastava) and Kishore Kadam (Rajendra Karma) are fair while Purnendu Bhattacharya (Narayan Bagchi) and Anupam Joardar (Union minister) are okay. All in all, Bastar – The Naxal Story is a poorly made film.
My rating – ** out of 5!