Review: Omkara..- The Times of India

Review: Omkara..- The Times of India:
Nikhat Kazmi
29 Jul, 2006 0228hrs IST, TIMES NEWS NETWORK.

Omkara ****
Cast: Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah Saif Ali Khan, Viveik Oberoi, Konkona Sen Sharma, Bipasha Basu
Direction: Vishal Bhardwaj

Uncle Shakespeare wasn't a genius just like that. If you think of some of the landmark adaptations of his plays on celluloid and on the stage, you will realise that his was a creativity which kickbutted a swirl of creativity in contemporary cinema and theatre.

Akira Kurosawa gave us a Japanese Macbeth, Baz Luhrmann gave us an Australian Romeo and Juliet, Gulzar gave us a Bollywoodian Comedy of Errors, Vishal Bhardwaj gave us a Mumbaiya Maqbool...

And now, Vishal Bhardwaj gives us an Othello that crackles with a heady indigenous native flavour drawn from the wild hinterlands of Uttar Pradesh where rogues and thugs write the rules of politics with the bullet and the bandook.

And yes, Vishal lives up to the Bard. For not only does he skilfully capture the netherworld of the human psyche — those ambiguous grey areas of conventional morality — which formed the playground for Shakespearean drama, he manages to lift the bar of Indian cinema with his unique adaptation.

Here's a film that breaks the conventional mould of Bollywood into smithereens and does it with a panache that encompasses all departments of film making. Vishal has taken the usual Bollywood actors and sculpted their make-over like no other director.

Of course, Ajay Devgan has already displayed the depths of his calibre in films like Gangajal and Apharan. Konkona too has carved a comfortable niche for herself in mean"