By Sandeep Datta

New Delhi, Jan.14 (ANI): At a time when people in the cosmopolitan cities have developed a strange habit of turning deaf just when they are most needed, the new-age cinema seems to be jolting society to stand up and be counted against rogues with a resounding echo...Halla Bol!!!! Director Rajkumar Santoshi and his star cast involving Pankaj Kapur, Ajay Devgan and Vidya Balan deserve kudos for raising many serious concerns affecting just about anyone and everyone's life in their latest movie Halla Bol.

The movie revolves around the murder of a little known girl in Mumbai during a celeb party. Her family is found wanting for any witness, despite the fact that she is killed in front of so many eyes. Despite initial hiccups for the fear for its negative effect on his filmi career, how the protagonist finally listens to his conscience is all there to watch.

Besides its tiny entertainment quotient, Halla Bol is basically a serious comment on the 'who cares' attitude of the public that leaves so many innocent and honest people all alone to fight injustice in courts and police stations. Halla Bol puts the audience in the confession box for playing mute spectators despite such grave instances of crime, and pushes them hard to introspect for nearly three hours. The film dares to be distinct and is a slap on public face for rapidly becoming a dead society to sound 'practical' at the cost of someone's life or modesty. The film attempts to showcase the upwardly mobile and so called educated class, a mirror that they invariably avoid fearing a loss of face.

Though the film has its share of abrupt endings or beginnings of sequences, the film director deserves appreciation for limiting unwanted sex or romance and valuing the audience's serious mood. Still, he would have done fair justice to the issues raised in Halla Bol had the film tried to be more exact and elaborate in hitting at the ills of 'modern' society.

Pankaj Kapur, playing a dacoit-turned-a stage drama director called "Sidhu", impresses the audience with his inimitable dialogue delivery. Despite his shorter than expected role in the film, he successfully mesmerises with his acting magic that he displayed in films like "Ek Doctor Ki Maut", "Maqbool", "Dharma" and comedy serials like "Zabaan Sambhal Ke" and "Office Office".

"Sidhu" questions the public, the media, the system for their irresponsible roles in society. He asks why is that everyone starts pretending to be deaf, dumb and blind whenever it comes to standing up for justice for others? The film won everyone's loud approval with noisy rounds of claps almost every 15 to 20 minutes mainly for its dialogues. But a little too much on the face adjectives perhaps derived from the roadside could have been avoided.

Be it a scene where the protagonist Ajay Devgan, who plays hero named Samir Khan a.k.a Ashfaaq, is shown urinating in the villain's drawing room in the open or Vidya Balan, who plays his wife in the film, expressing her angst before a media crew using words like "because my husband has got balls" or Pankaj Kapur saying: "Apnon ke dard per to har koi ro leta hai ....Asli insaan to wo hai jise doosron ke dard par bhi dard ho" won the thunderous applause of the audience.

Ajay Devgan, who impressed in the recent "Omkara" and Pankaj Kapur of the recent "Dharma" fame, showcase how they can do their country proud even at the Oscars, provided their work is given a fair opportunity to contest in their own country.

If '07 saw Shahrukh Khan starrer Chak De...India earning everyone's appreciation, '08 may be remembered for Halla Bol, which leaves a deep impact on awakening a dead society and encouraging people to take hoodlums to task with a roaring.....Halla Bollllllllllllllllllllllll!! (ANI)