Movie Review: Haddi – A lighting on expectations, Nawazuddin deserves better role

“Haddi” is a difficult movie to watch. The director pushes Nawazuddin Siddiqui into the familiar milieu of the underworld. Only this time, he is playing a brutal transgender looking for revenge (and empathy) under the shade of knives and guns.

A movie directed by Akshat Ajay Sharma or a test of the audience, how much crude violence and scenes they can tolerate. Haddi is picking the issues, that are sensitive and less explored by Bollywood, like human trafficking, acceptance of transgender as a human being by society, etc. But once you are picking the issues and you have stars like Nawazuddin and Anurag Kashyap, Akshat Ajay had the opportunity to do far better than what he did.

Without giving much away, it’s a story of retribution and for Nawazuddin’s heartfelt performance, one should give it a try. The most fun I had was watching some wonderful actors playing their supporting parts beautifully. Anurag Kashyap as the antagonist was clearly having fun.

Thankfully viewers have evolved to realize that there is a deep dark world outside, but we don’t need to see it depicted too especially after COVID-19, The lesson was to keep the viewing simple.

The lead character Haddi, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, has the strange profession of body snatching, and when he is almost caught in his native Allahabad, he escapes to Delhi. In Delhi, he joins the gang of a transgender named Inder (Saurabh Sachdev), who runs a prostitution racket and other crimes under the protection of politician Pramod Ahlawat (Anurag Kashyap).

Haddi’s past carries a history of child abuse, and a love story with Irfan (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), which has not been given adequate attention.

Gang head Revati Amma’s mansion is on the radar of land-grabbing politician Ahlawat and he orders a massacre that takes place with the height of brutality and insensitivity.

The second half of the movie turned into a revenge story by Haddi. His loved gang and his lover Irfan were brutally killed by politician Pramod Ahlawat. In the second half, there are mass murders, shootouts, and bizarre ways of human bone trafficking.

Again, this film does not even do justice to the issue transgenders and did explore the full acting potential of Nawazuddin, Zeeshan Ayyub, or Anurag Kashyap. Nawazuddin did an experiment with the chance to wear women’s clothing and portray a soft, romantic side in the scenes with Zeeshan, but expecting the viewer to believe that the over-made-up man is a sexy, desirable woman is a stretch.

Do we really want our ears to listen to harmful expletives remembering our womenfolk in the most degrading manner just because this is how the world is outside our 4 walls?

Watching the film with family, especially kids, is not advisable. Can we close the gates of realism after the wonderful “Gangs of Wasseypur”? We are already desensitized to violence so some more of the same doesn’t really help!

The film is available to watch on ZEE5 Global.