Z Minus for Zed plus **
Zed plus, directed by Chandra Prakash Dwivedi, is about the journey of a puncture-waalah; Aslam (Adil Hussain), who lives in a small town, in Rajasthan called Fatehpur with his wife Hameeda(Mona Singh) and his son. There is Peepal Waale Peer Ki Dargah in the town. Aslam is also one of the Khadims of the Dargah .He has a neighbor, Habib (Mukesh Tiwari) who once used to be his friend, but because of Saeeda, both of them started a cold war, which at times turned to be animate by words and actions. Saeeda (Ekavali Khanna) is the widow of their friend, who has an affair with Aslam. Habib likes Saeeda as well, but since she doesn’t pay any attention to her, he starts feeling jealous.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, the Prime Minister (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) faces a major crisis, and someone suggests his secretary to visit the Peepal Waale Peer Baba Ki Dargah. Co-incidentally, Habib was supposed to be the Khadim, for the day, and he gets some time to talk to the prime minister. When the prime minister asks him to ask for anything, for his services, he tells him about his problem with his neighbour. Since the prime minister doesn’t understand Hindi/Urdu, his secretary translates it for him, and in the process, makes a blunder, by confusing the prime minister.
The sentence is misconstructed, and the secretary and the prime minister think, Aslam is talking about Pakistan. So the Prime minister asks for a Z security arrangement for him. Later the secretary manages to convince Aslam to claim falsely, that he had received a threat froml a terrorist organization.
Sanjay Mishra plays a terrorist, Hidayatulla, who wants to take the claim of sending the threat. He orders his men to shoot Aslam. The series of events that take place, after that, change the whole life of Aslam.
Although the disclaimer says clearly that there isn’t any similarity between the real characters and events, some of the characters give you a feeling of the politicians. The prime minister, seems like he was loosely based on Narendra Modi, Samta Mukherjee, on Mamta Banerjee, etc. The storyline does sound interesting and it has some brilliant actors. But it stretches a lot. There are some unnecessary parts, which could have been edited, and it would have no effect on the movie’s storyline. It dragged during the first half and in the second half, was lengthy, although things had started happening by then. The editing was really not up to mark, direction was just okay, while some of the actors were trying hard. Some of the characters’ actions looked choreographed.
There was only one singer, Sukhwinder Singh, who sang almost all (if not, all) the songs, and even did cameos in both the songs he sang. The cinematography and the direction for the songs was also very awkward and unnatural.
There was one more thing that one couldn’t help but notice. The movie was full of dialogues, like “Pichwaade mein teer, toh yaad aati hai Peer” and “Goron ka dil dariya, pichwaada samandar hota hai”. With bland couplets, innuendos and abuses, they probably thought of making the use of abuses to spice up the movie. But it was unnecessary and irritating most of the time.
The movie was stretched unnecessarily. One can catch some Z’s during the movie.
The climax however, was alright, with Aslam’s speech, and the reunion.
I’d give it 2 stars.
