Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai movie review: Nandita Das, Manav Kaul do their best despite confusing screenplay

Language: Hindi Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Writer-director Soumitra Ranade describes his film Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai as a “conceptual remake” of Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s original 1980 film, which starred Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil. Manav Kaul steps into the shoes of the angry Albert Pinto. Unlike his character in the original, this Pinto is not a car mechanic but a white-collar worker whose idealism is shattered when his righteous father becomes the victim of a wrongful accusation. [caption id=“attachment_6265241” align=“alignnone” width=“1000”] Manav Kaul and Nandita Das in a still from Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai? Image via MTwitter[/caption] It’s a little hard to wrap one’s head around Kaul playing a Christian man from Mumbai. Nandita Das does a little better with her accent as Stella, his girlfriend, who is as confused about Albert’s mood swings as the audience is. The film opens with Albert Pinto getting into a jeep with Nayyar (Saurabh Shukla). A gangster boss has assigned Nayyar to take Albert to the location of a hit. Albert is not a hitman by profession. He has newly entered the trade, primarily to exercise vengeance. The long drive from Mumbai to Goa gives the two men plenty of time to ruminate on life, society, sexuality, rampant consumerism and the state of the nation. But rather than explain what ails the country or argue his stand, Albert just rants. While he’s trundling along winding roads, back in Mumbai, Stella and her family are speaking to the police about Albert who has been missing for a few days. Through them we get a picture of the once upright and righteous Albert. We learn from his brother that Albert always knew mMrigmMht from wrong, a far cry from the present-day drunken, gun wielding, angry young man in that jeep. Ranade uses the device of a secondary timeline to take us into the past, to illustrate how and why Albert went from nice guy to wannabe killer, enraged by apathy and corruption. As Albert says, “It was as if a bulb had broken inside my stomach.” Can an angry middle class man, wishing to be neither victim nor spectator, successfully take on an infected system to weed out corruption? Ranade’s film is not optimistic. On the contrary, it captures the prevalent sentiment of frustration, helplessness and the death of integrity and honesty, where might is right and money talks. In the present, Albert is suffering from hallucinations, mainly seeing Stella in different avatars. Das plays a variety of characters based on the women Albert encounters on the journey. Once you separate the poor fit between the actors and their very specific community roots, Das and Kaul do their best in a confusing screenplay. Even at 90 minutes, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai demands a great deal of patience and leaves you dissatisfied with the modern revision.