Sunday (2008) is about Sehar Thapar (Ayesha Takia), a
bright, pretty young professional living in Delhi who wakes up one
morning to find that she’s lost a day. She turns to ACP Rajveer
Randhava (Ajay Devgan), a brutal, deeply flawed, but very effective
police officer, for help. As Rajveer gets closer to unraveling the
mystery of the missing day, he learns that someone was killed that
night, and it looks very much like Sehar is the killer.
It’s a perfect premise for a tense psychological thriller exploring Delhi’s seamy underbelly, a Filmi Noir in the tradition of 88 Antop Hill. Sunday, however, is a comedy. Not a dark comedy or a noir satire, mind you, just an action comedy with an unusually dark premise and a supporting cast of wacky characters, most notably Ballu (Arshad Warsi), a hot-tempered unlicensed taxi driver with a secret, and his cool, composed, and slightly delusional sidekick Kumar (Irfan Khan), an aspiring actor.
Even the two leads are not what you’d expect. Sehar isn’t a plucky young doctor or lawyer, she’s a plucky young voiceover actress who makes a living dubbing foreign films and cartoons, and uses her array of silly voices to get herself out of (and into) trouble.
Rajveer, on the other hand, is a dirty cop, almost cheerfully corrupt. He loves taking bribes almost as much as he loves ice cream, and he really, really loves ice cream. Since he’s the hero, he’s really a good man just waiting for a gentle nag from the right woman to give up his criminal ways, and since he’s played by Ajay Devgan, he’s very good at punching people.
Bollywood is known for wild shifts in tone, and Sunday is no exception. The murders are played completely straight, while everything else is a potential source of laughs, up to and including a drug addled Sehar being picked up off the streets of Delhi by a succession of strange men. The effect is a bit disorienting, and the quick cuts and flashy editing tricks don’t really help.
While the tone is incoherent, the plotting is generally solid. The true identity of the killer seems to come out of left field, but on a second viewing everything fits, apart from one glaring plot hole. There are some solid performances, particularly from Arshad Warsi and Irrfan Khan. Apart from that, it’s a typical action comedy with a very atypical premise.
It’s a perfect premise for a tense psychological thriller exploring Delhi’s seamy underbelly, a Filmi Noir in the tradition of 88 Antop Hill. Sunday, however, is a comedy. Not a dark comedy or a noir satire, mind you, just an action comedy with an unusually dark premise and a supporting cast of wacky characters, most notably Ballu (Arshad Warsi), a hot-tempered unlicensed taxi driver with a secret, and his cool, composed, and slightly delusional sidekick Kumar (Irfan Khan), an aspiring actor.
Even the two leads are not what you’d expect. Sehar isn’t a plucky young doctor or lawyer, she’s a plucky young voiceover actress who makes a living dubbing foreign films and cartoons, and uses her array of silly voices to get herself out of (and into) trouble.
Rajveer, on the other hand, is a dirty cop, almost cheerfully corrupt. He loves taking bribes almost as much as he loves ice cream, and he really, really loves ice cream. Since he’s the hero, he’s really a good man just waiting for a gentle nag from the right woman to give up his criminal ways, and since he’s played by Ajay Devgan, he’s very good at punching people.
Bollywood is known for wild shifts in tone, and Sunday is no exception. The murders are played completely straight, while everything else is a potential source of laughs, up to and including a drug addled Sehar being picked up off the streets of Delhi by a succession of strange men. The effect is a bit disorienting, and the quick cuts and flashy editing tricks don’t really help.
While the tone is incoherent, the plotting is generally solid. The true identity of the killer seems to come out of left field, but on a second viewing everything fits, apart from one glaring plot hole. There are some solid performances, particularly from Arshad Warsi and Irrfan Khan. Apart from that, it’s a typical action comedy with a very atypical premise.
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