Antim: The Final Truth movie review – Poorly scripted, a dilute attempt to remake Marathi hit

Rahul is an angry young man. If the opening scene of him rushing to protect his meek father from his abusive boss wasn’t indicative enough, the same words are used to describe the young man with a ridiculously short temper. Ayush Sharma plays Rahul , a do no-gooder who watches his father struggle with small jobs. When they move to Pune, where they work as coolies in the market yard, Rahul suddenly develops an attitude. Violence gushes out of him. From being exploited and oppressed, Rahul becomes the oppressor. He takes to a life of crime with ease. Even his parents’ disdain doesn’t rattle him or prevent him from behaving despicably in their presence. Rahul is a dislikable man. His attempts at wooing the tea stall girl Manda (Mahima Makwana) are also loaded with arrogance and attitude. He respects no one, least of all women. In fact the few women characters in Antim are given neither agency nor any standing. They cower behind their husbands and curse their fate or sing and dance for their supper. Surprisingly Salman Khan doesn’t get a scene where he speaks for women’s equality either. Khan plays police inspector Rajveer Singh and is given multiple slow motion scenes accompanied by music swells. Singh is a righteous cop who is willing to bend the rules in a corrupt system to remove the poison. When a gang rivalry gets out of hand, he invokes the Mahabharata and Krishna’s strategy.

Singh and Rahul stand in opposite corners of the ring, and in the end, only one man will be left standing. Khan plays Singh as even-tempered, whereas Sharma, with his expressive eyebrows, is amped up and hyper throughout. His effort to internalise Rahul is evident but the screenplay has little room for nuance and skips efforts at humanization, not even in the complex father-son relationship. The money scene is when Khan and Sharma go head to head. They both remove their shirts for a clash of the six packs.

When Khan says “Tu Pune ka bhai hai. Mein pehle se Hindustan ka bhai hoon”, you imagine the hoots and whistles the writers expected when they came up with this line.

Director Mahesh Manjrekar revisits his Vaastav canvas. A number of Marathi film actors, including Sachin Khedekar, Upendra Limaye, Sayaji Shinde and Chhaya Kadam play supporting roles, which adds authenticity to the environment. That said, I raised my eyebrows when I saw Bengali actor Jisshu Sengupta show up as a gun-brandishing, tapori-talking Puneri gangster. The cinematography and action scenes give visual engagement to a story that barely scratches the surface. Based on Marathi film _Mulshi Pattern (_2018), which was set against farmer debts and criminal activities borne from land grabbing and exploitation, Antim is a violent, testosterone filled crime drama where men shoot first and don’t even think later. Antim: The Final Truth is available in cinemas. Rating: **

Udita Jhunjhunwala is a writer, film critic, and festival programmer.

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