Masand's Verdict: Traffic Signal

Traffic Signal seems a dishonest attempt on Bhandarkar's part to cash in on his reputation.

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Cast: Konkona Sensharma, Kunal Khemu, Ranvir Shorey, Neetu Chandra

Direction: Madhur Bhandarkar'

Sitting in that darkened cinema hall, watching Madhur Bhandarkar's Traffic Signal, I felt like someone had slapped me across the face really hard. I think most people who will pay to watch this film will come away feeling cheated because it's very clear that there's nothing to this film. No plot, no treatment, no performances.

The director has said that it's his final chapter in his trilogy of expose films after Page 3 and Corporate, but if you ask me, the only thing that Bhandarkar exposes with Traffic Signal is himself. I refuse to believe there was ever a script for this film, I'm guessing they just shot whatever came to their mind on the set.

Give a handicam to a 15-year-old, and I'm willing to bet he'll make a better film than this. And it's not like Bhandarkar isn't talented, it's not like he doesn't know how to tell a story. Chandni Bar was a deeply moving film, even Page 3 was quite clever in parts. But Traffic Signal just seems like a dishonest attempt on Bhandarkar's part to cash in on his reputation as a filmmaker of small, realistic pictures.

It's hard to explain what this film is about, because it's about nothing, quite frankly. Set in a busy, crowded part of Mumbai, the film follows the lives of all those people who live and work around a traffic signal, and whose livelihood depends in many ways on that traffic signal.

So the protagonists of this film are beggars, flower-sellers, pavement dwellers, prostitutes, eunuchs and drug addicts. I think the point that Bhandarkar may have been trying to drive through this film is that even begging is an industry today, a well-networked business that's linked to the underworld, to the police and to politicians in power.

I wish he'd realised however, that most people who read the papers and who follow the news would know of the beggar mafia already, so he's not really exposing anything here because it's an old truth, yesterday's news actually, one that people are aware of and have made peace with unfortunately. Yet, I think that had Bhandarkar told that story with some passion and some real drama, you might have been moved. But sadly, he tells the story so impassionately and so indifferently that you find yourself as unaffected by it as he himself seems to be.