‘Nishaanchi’ review: Saga of identical squabbling twins misses its mark

In Kanpur in 2006, the identical twins Babloo and Dabloo (Aaishvary Thackeray) set out to rob a bank, accompanied by Babloo’s girlfriend Rinku. The shoddily planned robbery fails, Babloo is jailed and Rinku (Vedika Pinto) is left without his protection. Dabloo finally dares to emerge from under Babloo’s shadow.

Anurag Kashyap’s Nishaanchi (Shooter) is the first in a two-part drama about brothers divided by temperament and their love for the same woman. Although smoothly crafted and deftly performed, Nishaanchi is also a conventional and predictable tale of ambition and revenge via mild sibling rivalry.

Kashyap’s near-academic study of classic Bollywood conventions contains nearly everything you expect from this kind of film: squabbling twins, a widow tailoring away to survive, a villain keen on grabbing things that doesn’t belong to him. Kashyap and co-writers Prasoon Mishra and Ranjan Chandel dial down the sentimentality, treating formulaic devices in a realistic, gritty manner.

The Iago-like Ambika Prasad (Kumud Mishra) drives a wedge between the wrestler Jabardast (Viineet Kumar Siingh) and Jabardast’s mentor. Jabardast’s wife Manjari (Monika Panwar) struggles to bring up her twin sons by herself. Babloo grows up to be a bundle of swagger, while Dabloo dutifully disappears into his buttoned-up shirts.

When Ambika threatens Rinku’s security, Babloo goes from being Ambika’s most effective enforcer to Rinku’s ardent lover. Rinku’s own transformation is so rapid it simply whooshes by. Meanwhile, Dabloo watches from the sidelines, waiting for his cue to claim the spotlight.

On occasion, Nishaanchi sets itself up as a movie that has emerged out of older movies, from Mother India and Deewar to Scarface and Kashyap’s own Gangs of Wasseypur. Like Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), Nishaanchi has an anachronistic soundtrack and characters who take their behaviour cues from popular films. For instance, Babloo’s entire knowledge of intimacy comes from Raja Hindustani.

But without the eccentric characters, parodic humour and anarchic sensibility that made Gangs of Wasseypur distinctive, Nishaanchi feels like a pale shadow of that saga of multi-generational vengeance.

Tucked into Gangs of Wasseypur’s episodic narrative and small-town tableau vivant was a pastiche of the fatalistic, predictable and stultifying Bollywood movie. By contrast, the 176-minute Nishaanchi is largely unremarkable and exposition-heavy. The most interesting part of the plot barely emerges – the reasons why two men who are impossible to tell apart grow up to be the night-and-day of each other’s lives.

The movie has its share of wild moments, cheeky comedy and meta-asides about the influence of popular Hindi cinema. Nishaanchi benefits hugely from Kashyap’s talent for pushing actors to realise their full potential.

Monika Panwar and Kumud Mishra stand out in the ensemble cast. The untested Aaishvary Thackeray, making his screen debut here, is a surprise, with something more to offer than sheer novelty.

Despite looking about the same age as her grown-up sons, Monika Panwar is excellent as the long-suffering Manjari. Panwar’s dry, acrid and at times fierce matriarch makes Manjari seem more substantial than she is.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub has a few scenes as the grubby-handed police inspector Kamal Ajeeb. Kumud Mishra is a delight as Ambika Prasad. Mishra deploys his marvellously layered voice and deceptive placidity to good effect.

Like Ambika, whose bark is worse than his bite, the movie too is poised to deliver something meatier than the average Hindi film saga about disgruntled siblings and revenge and small-town crime. The lack of histrionics in Nishaanchi is welcome, as is the absence of a grand quality to Babloo-Dabloo’s travails.

They are ordinary men on a familiar journey, rather than larger-than-life characters on an epic quest. But doubling, one of cinema’s favourite and most fruitful themes, is little more than a source of contrivance in a film that ultimately misses its mark.