Thar movie review: This is one of those films where the setting is the real hero– the ‘marusthal’ (desert) stretching as far as the eye can see, crumbling forts, bare trees providing meagre shade, implacable, hard beauty.
Thar has many elements jostling for our attention: a tiny outpost in a border town, a mysterious stranger, a couple of cops, and a series of bodies, draining of life-blood, decaying, dying. But this is one of those films where the setting is the real hero– the ‘marusthal’ (desert) stretching as far as the eye can see, crumbling forts, bare trees providing meagre shade, implacable, hard beauty. This stunning landscape and the haunting soundscape becomes the site of a ‘bawandar’ (storm), as a principal character describes it, which blows everything away in its wake. These sights and sounds of Thar will stay with me, even as I quibble about some of it.
This film would have been called a spaghetti western in the days when Sholay (1975) was released. The filmmakers are aware of how much Thar, set in 1985, reminds us of the OG desi western– a balcony with a woman looking over it, the blazing lights of the desert, the armed men clattering on horses, and the keening violins. And just in case we’ve lost sight of it, Inspector Surekha Singh (Anil Kapoor), who likes being explicatory, muses aloud whether it is not about bad guy Gabbar anymore, but maybe Jai and Veeru, or even Basanti, or, you know, Ramlal?
Having believed that he has sufficiently muddied the waters (the dialogues are credited to Anurag Kashyap, who was probably grinning when he penned this and other salty, invective-laden lines in the film) the cop who has stuck to his job without getting a promotion, returns to the job at hand: who is behind the killings?
480p Download Free Single Link
720p Download Free Single Link