Haddi Review: Tapping into his ever present versatile aura, Nawazuddin Siddiqui leads the latest Zee Studios production as two distinct never-seen-before titular characters – Haddi and Harika, a transgender woman. Alongside him, filmmaker-actor Anurag Kashyap takes on the lead role of the antagonistic figure of a gangster turned politician. The Hindi ZEE5 original film marks Akshat Ajay Sharma’s directorial debut with a noir revenge drama storyline.
Co-written by Akshat Ajay Sharma and Adamya Bhalla, the film also stars Ila Arun, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Saurabh Sachdeva, Shridhar Dubey, Rajesh Kumar, Vipin Sharma, and Saharsh Shukla in pivotal roles. It has a runtime of 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Haddi Movie Review Contains No Spoilers
Haddi Review: Discussion
Though set in the modern ruins of NCR, Gurgaon, and Noida, the movie takes us all through the underbelly of the supposedly posh region. Tackling with several subplots, it takes a vindictive route to establish the life journey of Siddiqui’s character, first a rookie transgender, who later climbs up the criminal hierarchy owing to their sole purpose of avenging their family against Kashyap’s popular gangster turned influential politician.
The movie starts off on a murky note that is bound to leave the viewer’s understanding of it cloudy. Several images of the past, and the present non-linearly converge into each other so as to detail out the growth of Nawazuddin’s character and the series of actions and schemes they’re involved in at the present. At first, all of this fleshes out as a suspenseful mystery, which extends to the characterisation of the actor’s role as well. We barely understand and know anything about Haddi, but as the truth unfolds, and other characters from his past start showing up, either through the means of their old memories or their involvement in the present happenings, things start to come to light.
Haddi is a twisted, sick, and bloody entry, but despite the extent of gore and bloodshed pervasive throughout the film’s duration, there’s a genuine attempt by the director to create complex characters along the way, that are especially brought to life by Siddiqui’s ingenious adaptability and Kashyap’s crafty trickery. Perhaps the best aspect of the movie is how it raises the question – How many wrongs make a right? – a question that can’t be answered when situated in the greyness of reality. And in that way, neither of the characters can actually be looked at as the moral centres or protagonists of the story because they’re all, in their own way, anti-heroes or straight forward villains.
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Akshat Ajay Sharma’s lens does a great job at capturing the hardships faced by Siddiqui’s character in the past while seamlessly bridging its distance with the vengeful present. A sign put up during the course of the movie states “Ask me who I am, Not What I am”, and similarly the plot and the characterisation isn’t reductively obsessed with appealing to us about Harika’s gender identity, rather it situates their character in the midst of a plot that is largely about avenging one’s family. By doing so, the narrative normalises the existence of the third gender by ascribing it with a story that’s not all about their gender identity, but exceeds past that to see them as a person.
My major qualms with the film are that, since it pens down a storyline that’s too complex and layered for it to be reduced to the duration of a movie, a lot of things rush past us for their mentions to be wrapped up as soon as possible. Focussing mostly on Siddiqui’s side of the story, we don’t necessarily get enough time to see Kashyap’s deepu cable presence unravel completely. Moreover, his corrupt ways of running his operation and campaign are not much paid heed to either.
Plus, the last sequence particularly felt too rushed to me. With the time jump and the lack of focus on the emotional catharsis, it instantly jumps back into physical altercations, and though this climax is supposed to feel liberating, it doesn’t.
Other than that, Ila Arun and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub play their parts well in terms of the little but strong screentime they’ve been allotted. The movie seems to have a lot to say, but most of the conversation around its noir theme gets lost in the abundance of physical action sequences.
Final Thoughts
Much like what the actors involved in the passionate project have said, the movie is earnestly unlike the mainstream content out there for us to see. It blends in various dark shades of genres like drama, thriller, revenge, crime, action, while also associating it with a heart full of emotions. It’s a great piece of filmmaking to witness these prolific actors in completely new avatars despite its certain rushed bits that fail to focus on delivering a gritty and intimidating conversation.
Haddi started streaming on ZEE5 on September 7, 2023.