At the beginning of the week, while looking around on Netflix, I came across this movie. The title said nothing to me, these two words were incomprehensible, but judging from the actors on the cover, I knew it has to be South Asian. Movies from that region are not really my thing for the cultural differences and have only seen once in the last two decades.
After reading the storyline provided by the streaming media service and saw it's a a Bollywood movie, my first reaction was to move on and continue scrolling, but on a second thought and seeing English dubbing is available, I decided to give it a try. Worst case scenario I can quit after 5 minutes.
Before I continue, for those who don't speak Hindi, this is what the title means:
Gajab Raat (गजब रात) translates literally from Hindi to "Amazing Night," "Wild Night," or "Astonishing Night".
After watching the movie, I can assure you, amazing it wasn't, wild maybe and astonishing ... to some extents, but not because it was so good 😬 (Indian users are going to throw stones at me for this review, but I'll be brave 😂)
A corrupt police officer's plans for a profitable night are disrupted when he discovers a severely injured girl abandoned from a moving car in Delhi, leading him into an international conspiracy.
The movie starts with the police raiding a hotel, as I understood, to disrupt prostitution. The raid was disrupted by a road incident, that happened nearby, during which a half dead woman jumped out of a moving car. The crowd gathers around the poor victim, Ajay Nirvit (Manoj Bajpayee), the police officer in charge of the raid is directed to the scene. The victim is taken to the nearby hospital and that's when the race begins.
All of the sudden everyone becomes interested in the case, for different reasons, obviously. Public pressure is building up as well as everyone is posting about it on social media platforms.
We soon learn about the official version of the CBI is that the victim is a mistress of a drug lord who was feeding information about high profile people to the CBI, but as I said, this was only the official version of the story, not the truth and Ajay Nirvit, who is a corrupt police officer who can't keep it in his pants decides to get to the bottom of it.
After more lies, a lot of complications, twists and turns we find out that the victim was a journalist, who got into trouble, after getting her hand on some incriminating evidence about a huge conspiracy involving high ranking politicians, intelligence agencies, and pharmaceutical companies. This is the reason everyone is interested in burying the truth and they are willing to go to any length to make the problem go away.
I was curious to see how the story unfolds and how it ends. The ending was a bit surprising, a bit frustrating too, not what I was expecting, but again, this was an Indian movie.
My Take
The story itself is not new, we've seen it countless times, but this doesn't mean it's bad. I like such stories, but what we've seen here is not exactly the right way of treating it. Being a movie from a country of which movie industry I don't know (or what I know about it is not exactly flattering), I can't decide if this is just a poorly written or executed movie (or both), or this is how Bollywood is working, when it comes to crimes and thrillers.
First of all, what surprised me quite early was that everyone was corrupt and who appeared not to be, had a price as well and could have had their mind changed about their position pretty quickly.
The other was their only worry was optics, nothing more. Everyone was trying to cover their own asses, no matter what it took and needless to say, the victim was expendable. Everything for the greater good, right?
There were a bunch of funny and stupid things as well, most of it you don't see elsewhere, but again, this is an Indian movie. Let's see the list.
I couldn't stop laughing when I saw police officers executing the raid carrying wooden sticks 😅 This was a WTF moment as in every decent country police officers have proper equipment for the job and wooden stick is not part of the gear.
The raid itself was really stupid. I understand Ajay Nirvit, the corrupt officer in charge was looking to round up his earnings, but come on. They are looking for unmarried people spending the night in the same room? It's 2026.
They need to fire the make up artists and hire one that does a better job. The patient arrives in the hospital in critical condition, her face and arms are covered by blood. After a few hours, her cut and stitched wound has miraculously healed and barely visible by the morning. They punch the victim several times in the face with force, but she only has a couple of bruises, no black eye, not even her eyes or lips are swollen. Emergency services in India must be phenomenal if they are able to treat a heavily punched face like that in a few hours. What a joke.
The journalist goes after a high ranking official to ask for an interview, and her strongest argument to do so is, "this could be the biggest break of my career". Seriously? What a joke. Every journalist would say that and the high ranking official is not there to make anyone's career. The most obvious and plausible argument would have been, the information would be important for the public, but it looks like they have a lot to learn in this regard.
The whole action seemed rushed. Also, playing tense music to keep viewers on their toes is a well known tactic, but they have taken it to the extreme here.
At the end of the day, I see this movie as a parody as I can't take it seriously, which is why it was amusing. As about the rating, I was on the fence because the movie is quite bad by my standards, but I'm going to be generous and give it a 60/10.
Rating: 60/100