Escape this film!

A week after Madhur Bhandarkar's Satta, which depicted a powerful female protagonist (played by Raveena Tandon), comes another woman-oriented film based on the true life story of a lady called Sushmita Banerjee.

Director Ujjal Chatterjee's Escape From Taliban traces Sushmita's (Manisha Koirala) journey from Kolkata to strife-torn Afghanistan after she rebels against her parents and marries Janbaaz Khan (Nawab Khan).

Sushmita arrives in her husband's village at a time when Afghanistan has already been devastated by the Soviet invasion and the Taliban movement is gaining momentum in the war-ravaged country. (There is a scene in which very non-Russian looking Russian soldiers stop Janbaaz's jeep and question him in curious-sounding English).

Anyway, this modern woman brought up in Kolkata's liberal environment starts feeling stifled in her husband's regressive extended family which treats women like cattle. Nor is she prepared for the gun-toting and bloodshed that is an inherent part of life in Afghanistan.

As the story unfolds, Sushmita makes the shocking discovery that her husband is already married to a native woman and expects his Indian bride to accept this reality. Worse, he quietly dumps both wives and returns to India for work.

The rest of the plot is all about this gutsy woman's innumerable attempts at escaping Afghanistan along with her adopted daughter. Sadly, after spending over an hour in chronicling her brave efforts at trying to slip out of the country, the film's end is very tame.

Also, while we would have to believe what we are shown because the film is based on a true story, it is quite difficult to digest the fact that this kafir woman goes around lecturing and defying the Taliban at every given opportunity (at the peak of their tyrannical rule) and gets away with it.

In fact, Aly Khan who plays the local Taliban chief, actually waits for her to finish her fiery outbursts till he raises an eye-brow like (yesteryear actor) K N Singh and admonishes her. What's worse, while he is barking out his ultimatums, you are agonising over his false beard, which looks like it might just fall off if he barks too loud.

Bijon Dasgupta's tacky sets can pass off as an Afghan village, probably because most of us in India don't know what an Afghan village is supposed to look like. For outdoor locations, the rugged terrain of picturesque Ladakh is meant to pass off as Afghanistan.

As far as production values go, Escape From Taliban hovers in the sub-zero region. The camera makes these funny, shaky movements in scenes where the Taliban soldiers are terrorising their subjects. Far from looking like an artistic touch, it seems like the cameraman dozed off while these shots were in progress.

The film's supporting cast is extremely ineffective because most artistes lack the ability. If you happen to watch the dubbed Hindi version (this is actually an English language film), there is the added irritation caused by lack of cohesion between the dialogues and visuals.

Debutant Nawab Khan is painfully lacklustre. Aly Khan is hilarious but not intentionally.

It is up to Manisha Koirala in her neatly permed hair to prop this show. She energetically tries to inject life into a film that has an interesting story, but lacks actual execution.

Unless you are a devout Manisha fan, it would be advisable to safely escape Escape From Taliban.