Bheed has an universal subject about Covid-19 which shook the whole world. Anubhav Sinha had so much scope to show many things but failed miserably. Bheed brings the crowd together but forgets why it has gathered the crowd.
We had 2 to 3 films in Bollywood based on Covid-19 and Lockdown, one was Amazon Prime’s Unpaused and Madhur Bhandarkar’s India Lockdown. India Lockdown was a total crap while Unpaused was watchable for some segments (especially the Nagraj Manjule directorial story ‘Vaikunth’). Bheed joins the list and is a big disappointment.
Covid-19 subject had many stories to tell but Bheed only shows the limited ones and even these limited ones are left incomplete. Bheed talks about justice in the film, but it itself doesn’t do justice to its topic.
Bheed tells the story about the Covid-19 lockdown where workers faced difficulties in reaching their homes. Bheed tells the story about the struggle of these workers and what problems they face in this journey.
Performance wise each and every actor has performed their parts well. Rajkummar Rao as a police officer is good. Bhumi Pednekar also performs her part well. Pankaj Kapur is an acting legend and he never disappoints. Dia Mirza had limited screen space and is decent. Ashutosh Rana’s act doesn’t disappoint. Kritika Kamra as a news reporter is also good. It was a tailor made role for Aditya Shrivastava and he nails his part. With such a stellar cast Anubhav Sinha had a golden opportunity to create something better but he disappoints. Rather than focusing on Rajkummar and Bhumi’s love story he should have paid more attention to their characters.
Instead of showing hard-hitting, helpless and scenes full of struggles, Bheed shows an unnecessary love story of Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar. Dia Mirza’s story is left incomplete with no proper conclusion. Pankaj Kapur has been presented as a terrorist. No one was wearing masks in the film and not following social distancing. There was unnecessary inclusion of casteism and Hindu-Muslim things. Don’t know why Anubhav Sinha drags all this stuff in his films.
Anubhav Sinha has made many mistakes at the start of his career with directing films like Dus, Tathastu, Cash, etc. We saw a new version of Anubhav Sinha with hard-hitting films like Mulk and Article 15. But after delivering these 2 films he is back to the past and making boring films. He made a 2 hour long film with just a 2 second slap. Thappad which looked like a hard-hitting film on domestic abuse was full of unnecessary scenes and looked stretched. Anek was a socio-political drama against the geographical backdrop of Northeast India which doesn’t prove its motive till the end and was unnecessarily dragged.
In the name of hard-hitting and realistic films Anubhav Sinha is just serving content less films. Choosing good subjects and getting bad marks has become a habit for Anubhav Sinha.
I still believe that one can try making a film on Lockdown and Covid-19 with a hard-hitting presentation showing how the lives of people turned upside down in the pandemic.
A film which shows the struggle of the middle class and lower class people should be high on emotions so that one can feel their pain and can connect to it. But here in Bheed you feel for the characters because you have read or heard about such stories but the connection is not so strong because of the lackluster presentation.
People have come out of the Covid-19 situation and the world has come back to the normal situation again. And with this kind of presentation, there is a big question: Do we really need this film Bheed?
The only thing which I liked about Bheed is it’s Black and White theme. The B&W theme is shown as Covid-19 had made many people’s lives colorless and so was Anubhav’s intention to make people experience the film in Black and White. But what’s the use of this creativity when you can’t present the film properly and don’t provide a better story.
Bheed could have been a sensational film if it had hard-hitting dialogues and powerful presentation. The film could have also shown about the role of media and politics during Covid-19 but doesn’t show any. Wasting 2 hours for this docu-drama on the big screen is not worth it at all. The news headlines and the social media news which came during Covid-19 were better than this whole docu-drama. Bheed looses its track and gets the basics wrong. Anubhav Sinha delivers a hattrick of craps (Thappad, Anek and Bheed).
Rating – 2/5*
Watch the trailer below:
