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.
Co-written by Akshat Ajay Sharma (who also directs the movie) 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.
The movie tackles with several subplots and 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.
Haddi 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 schemes that they are presently involved in.
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.
The movie does a great job of not placing the onus of the story on the protagonist’s gender identity but rather, giving it a cause much more important and which exceeds past that to see Siddiqui’s character as a person. By doing so, the story normalises the existence of the third gender and showcases Harika has just another person with something to live for.
All these points make Haddi a layered and complex story, one that, unfortunately, it is not able to handle given the short runtime. As a result, the movie is far too rushed and doesn’t spend as much time on the other characters, who are equally grey and interesting as Siddiqui’s character. Moreover, it’s need to focus more on the physical altercations instead of the emotional catharsis doesn’t feel liberating in the slightest.
In the end, Haddi isn’t unlike mainstream Indian movies and blends various genres and a lot of emotion to give us an interesting watch. Inspite of its rushed storytelling that fails to deliver a gritty conversation, it is still a great piece of filmmaking with a whole host of talented actors.
Haddi has a runtime of 130 minutes is streaming on Zee5 right now.