Imagine leaving the Prime Minister of India in room with a suspected assassin who is also carrying a gun? The Head of Staff and Chief of Security have been hired for this very purpose to ensure protocol but one roar from the lady (played by Dimple Kapadia) in the name of thinking with emotions, and such protocols are thrown out of the window.
This, and many other cinematic liberties, are sprayed right through the two hour narrative of A Thursday which is well intentioned but has to be savored with a pinch of salt. As long as you want to believe that this is a film purely for entertainment purpose, these kind of unbelievable moments in the film can be well forgotten. More so, since the theme of the film is topical and also sets you thinking right into the extended end credit rolls.
Yami Gautam gets an author backed role in this film where, unlike many of her previous outings, she is not a damsel in distress but someone who takes charge of her life and makes life miserable for others. Is she is a bad woman taking on the good guys or a good woman taking on the bad guys? Well, not that you are set thinking about it since you know the obvious at many places, especially when she is not menacing when she is in front of the 15 kids that she has hold hostage, than when she is way from them. You go get the gist, and you smile.
However, Yami is not smiling in this film where she has a lot of sinister plans drawn down to the T. Whether it is procuring the gun, or thinking out the whole hostage scenario to knowing her next line of action to the ransom amount she wants to the demands that she makes to the end result that she is well aware, there is a lot going on in the mind of the 30 year old character who chose to let go of her lawyer degree and instead spent time amidst kids in her sprawling playschool.
The setting in fact reminds of another movie on the same theme, Collar Bomb, which was released on the same OTT platform, Disney+Hotstar. There too, a teacher held kids hostage and Jimmy Sheirgill played the character who was a mix of two cops in the fold her, Atul Kulkarni and Neha Dhupia, who are also a different kind of jodi for a change, a Muslim and a Christian.
Wait, there is more. December release Dhamaka too played on the same lines, what with an unknown voice holding an entire news channel hostage, Kartik Aaryan being the anchor. To think of it, his could well be a spinoff of the character played by Maya Sarao here. Both had the same motive, to get the prime time slot, even if that meant selling their soul.
The one who isn’t doing that though is Karanvir Sharma, who is wondering why his fiancée Yami is behaving the way she is. After all, just in the morning she was advising him on how to solve a business problem for one of his clients and now he is finding himself been hounded by Mumbai Police, which definitely is not acting in a way it does in many Rohit Shetty films.
That’s the difference here when it comes to A Thursday. It doesn’t take the Simmba route (which, in spirit, had a similar core conflict) and isn’t as watertight as its spiritual title bro A Wednesday. However, its heart is in the right place and that’s what makes this Behzad Khambata directed film a good watch.