I just watched Traffic, a film by Rajesh Pillai and I had to write about it. It’s a powerful movie starring a talented star cast and yet no one talked about it. At least not in the same way as they would about Raees or Tubelight or Fast and Furious. Movies such as Traffic which actually tells a powerful story, which evokes myriad strong emotions, which shows how life is and how tough decisions or situations can be, these movies unfortunately don’t get the attention that the mainstream movies enjoy.

It’s sad to see that these movies are not considered mainstream. It emphasises how we so strongly clutches onto entertainment for escapism rather than to cherish what we truly have. We spend countless hours, lot of money and great amount of conversations on superheroes or aliens or wizards but not enough on movies such as Traffic or Alif.

It’s not a rant because I’m one of you. But after this realisation I want to do my part and talk about the film which evoked strong emotions in me. The movie is about transferring a heart from Mumbai to Pune within 150 mins and beating the traffic of both these populous cities. But there’s more, the movie is about the parents who decide to pull the plug on their brain dead son so that doctors can use his heart to save a young girl’s life. The movie is about the mother who is fighting with time to see her daughter live. The movie is about the traffic cop who is fighting his own demons but was brave to take up the challenge and the responsibility of fighting the odds and delivering the heart on time.

The film is about humanity, you’ve to watch it to see that humanity does exist. And to see it, it’s a beautiful feeling. The movie very expertly focuses on safety measures, religion and harmony and how a life is bigger than all of this. It deals with the intricacies of our lives and how we are connected to each other in ways that we are not aware of.

Manoy Bajpayee as usual delivered a great performance. There was no action sequences, no masala as such, no in-your-face heroism. It was subtle, powerful and real. Jimmy Shergill, Divya Dutta, Sachin Khedekar, Parambrata Chatterjee are such talented actors, they performed their roles with depth and finesse.

It is a remake of the 2011 Malayalam film of same name. Originally written by brothers Bobby and Sanjay, the film’s screenplay has been adapted into Hindi by Suresh Nair, while the dialogues are penned by Piyush Mishra.

The direction is good but for me it’s the story and the performance which held my attention. A must watch film. It’s not a light-hearted film but it’s a great film. Watch it!