Sanjay Mishra and Neena Gupta's Vadh is a well-intended flipped morality tale

Sanjay Mishra who plays an economically vulnerable school teacher in Indore, tells a cop in Vadh, “Once I had slapped a student. I couldn’t sleep for days. Now I’ve put a knife through a man’s throat, and I feel no remorse.”

This could be Vijay Salgaonkar in Drishyam if he ever decided to confess to the murder that he committed to protect his family.

Some crimes say these closeted vigilante films deserve a personal fast court. The bestial man the innocent upright school teacher kills in the fascinating if at times trite and over-written Vadh. is a debt collector, who crosses all limits.

Sanjay Mishra as Shambhunath the schoolteacher and Saurabh Sachdeva as Pandey play off well against each other, the former flawlessly timid and intimidated, the latter uncouth and intimidating. The manner in which co-writers-directors Jaswal Singh Sandhu and Rajeev Barnwal stage the murder in the elongated living room of Shambhunath’s home, is a trifle disturbing. It’s as if Shambhunath has been doing this all his life.

Sapun Narula’s camera watches the crime with a quietly observant eye. The technicians don’t mean to impress.

The upturned morality apart, there is plenty to appreciate, even admire in Vadh. The central performances are exceptionally well-tuned. Sanjay Mishra brings out the helplessness and suppressed rage of a common senior citizen fed up of being bullied. Neena Gupta is equally strong as the silently supportive wife.

Mishra and Gupta play against one another like Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi in Gautam Ghose’s Paar, except that the pigs being herded across the river are in human form. The battle now goes far beyond caste injustice. If you are weak you will be tormented. Brahminical immunity is a thing of the past.

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