“The Last Act” is a well-intentioned Sunday afternoon watch

At the beginning of The Last Act, you wonder why it was intentioned to be such a low key release under Director’s Rare, so strong is the initial spell. You are spellbound as the movie builds momentum in the first couple of acts. Yet as the spell fades, the movie meanders and flounders, and another promise remains unfulfilled. You realise a lot of things that are wrong with the movie.

The movie has everything right about its description – A dead body with unknown identities, 12 clues found on the body, each leading to a different city. 12 directors have directed individual sections (cities) and one of them also tries to bring the conclusion together. The plot is conceived by Anurag Kashyap. And all of these are the right reasons why the movie keeps you on the seat.

The plot is intriguing, and as an afterthought, I must say that the conclusion is a very interesting one too. I have no intentions of revealing any of the spoilers.

The twelve cities, and sub-plots, are presented in uniquely different styles, ranging from simplistically linear and effective presentations to queasy metaphorical representations. The actors, barring a couple (like Saurabh Shukla and Asif Basra) are new names and new faces. Yet, most of them are effective in their miniature roles. Hardly anyone has more than 5 minutes of screen presence, which helps you not dwell too much on their shortcomings. So, your entire focus on plot inconsistencies, and quality of story telling within each section. And it is here that the movie flounders.

There are far too many loose-ends (and I mean loose-ends, not incidents/events open to interpretation) in the movie. Also, from a narrative standpoint, some of the details seem way too coincidental, too-far fetched, or two creative. And the most baffling of them is the missing sense of timelines from any of these events. The Pune and Chandigarh sequences are a little too esoteric, while the Hissar sequence hardly adds anything to the story anyway. Take these three out and you’d still have a very intriguing movie, I’d guess.

Yet, the movie still offers a lot of high points in the way the story is told and the plot is brought together. Some of the actors are top class in their performances. The cops in the Ghaziabad and Delhi stories, Ameena in the Delhi story, the psychotic cop in Pune, the khaini eating cop from Mumbai, and a whole bunch of others stand out. The calcutta sequence is delightful. The background score of the movie is quite good. The dead body in the opening scene is a little too flimsy and hence the impact of the blood and gore is not as hard hitting as it could have been. You can clearly see the outline of the puppet. Occasionally, the camera guys are visible in mirror reflections as well. But those are minor flaws considering the kind of forum Anurag has provided to these budding film makers. And on that, given the budget on which the movie is made, and the overall entertainment value of the film, I’d give it a big thumbs up. It’s better to support these movies than ridiculous movies like JTHJ or SOTY or …

Endnote: Watch it at home on a Sunday afternoon. Or theater (this week) if you want to support more such movies.