Movie: Aapla Manus Rating: ★★★ Genres: Drama Censor: UA Duration: 138 min. Studio / Presenter: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Ajay Devgn Producer: Watergate Marathi Motion Pictures DOP: Suhas Gujarathi Director: Satish Rajwade Cast:  Nana Patekar, Irawati Harshe, Sumeet Raghavan Movie Review by: Ulhas Shirke

Marathi experimental plays have always attempted ‘out of the box’ scripts and one of them has been playwright Vivek Bele’s Marathi play ‘Katkone Trikon‘, which won many popular awards in the past. Now, producer Ajay Devgn and director Satish Rajwade have given cinematic form to this play offering a mediocre title ‘Aapla Manus‘ to their latest released film. So, we can say that ‘Aapla Manus‘ presents complex relationship using Right angled triangle.

‘Aapla Manus‘ is a story of a young couple Rahul ( Sumeet Raghavan) and Bhakti ( Irawati Harshe) and their intricate relationship with Rahul’s father Aaba ( Nana Patekar) who lives with the couple. The couple has already kept their only little child in a Boarding school, since both of them are working. While Sumeet is a practicing lawyer, Bhakti is a maths teacher. The busy lifestyle of the couple and his grandson kept away from him, makes Aaba feel cut off from the family, though he lives with them. Aaba who is in a habit of communicating most of the time, is often worried over small happenings. And, this gives scope to the daughter in law to enter into frequent arguments. The son tries to keep himself away from these arguments, though his father expects his support.

One day, on returning from a short vacation spent by the couple along with Aaba, an unexpected incident takes place, which is shown in the initial scene of the film. Aaba is shown fallen from the balcony of the house, during the night hour, when it is raining heavily. The building watchman seeks help and we see the arrival of a Police Investigating Officer Mr. Nagargoje ( Nana Patekar playing one more character) . He makes all efforts to detect whether it was a suicide case or an attempt to murder.

Thereafter, we find the Police officer finding enough scope to detect the crime using his own methods to prove his target guilty. But, the well written script and screenplay of the film, keep the audience guessing with twists in the script and good direction coming from Satish Rajwade. However, when the film nears conclusion, it leaves enough scope for the audience to react with their quick analysis. Nevertheless, the good dialogues and wonderful performances of all the lead characters helps to keep the audience engaged most of the time in this 138 minute long film, without song breaks. Nana Patekar steals the show with his superb performance through two different characters, but not much attention has been paid to make him look different , except for wearing a sweater and modulating his voice for the older character. Even while performing two different characters on stage, an artiste needs different looks, so why not on screen, where there was enough scope to take cinematic liberties ?

It is not only Nana, even Sumeet and Irawati have given their best through their respective roles to display their acting skills in their own style. In the concluding part of the film, we see the arrival of Nagargoje’s son , played by Ajay Devgn. By the way, Inspector’s tragic story has also some relevance with the main theme of the film. All in all ‘Aapla Manus‘ is a good film and can be enjoyed by those who love to watch mystery based films, with good background music .