Movie Review | Baazaar combines markets with masala, but more of the latter

The world of stock markets has plenty of emotion, drama, lucre, and, in the A-leagues, larger-than-life figures. It would naturally follow, then, that good material from the trading world can make for a great movie if not for the complexity of the subject. So far, Bollywood has failed to come up with a potboiler that packages both realism and entertainment in the right doses.

Baazaar, directed by debutante Gauravv K Chawla, tries to correct this but with limited success.

We are introduced to ace trader-cum-ruthless stock manipulator Shakun Kothari (net worth: Rs 5,000 crore), played by Saif Ali Khan. He comes up the hard way – cutting his teeth, as a 10-year-old, in angadia, the Gujarati-dominated business through which illegal cash transactions take place.

The opening scene sets the tone: Kothari concludes a hostile takeover of a company whose ageing promoter is unwilling to let go, at a religious prayer meeting set amidst emphatic chanting and a gripping background score.

Enter small-time broker Rizwan Ahmed (Rohan Mehra) from Allahabad, who comes to Mumbai in the hope of following into his idol’s (Kothari) footsteps and making it big on Dalal Street.

Rizwan is able to partner with Kothari, thanks to his sheer desperation and help from a colleague Priya (played ably by Radhika Apte). But the Kothari-Rizwan relationship evolves similar to that of Gordon Gekko and Bud Fox in the 1987 movie Wall Street – the protégé realizes his cold-blooded mentor would gladly throw him under the bus out of sheer greed. The inter-personal dynamics between Kothari and Rizwan form the story’s core.

The movie does not delve into the minutae of stock trading, and mainly revolves around the concepts of insider trading, systemic corruption and hostile takeovers – while also dumbing them down and getting some technical points wrong. So an 18 percent share in a company is described as a ‘majority stake’. While a company management takes no effort to protect its stock when it is hammered by rumours planted by Kothari - not even issuing a denial.

SEBI chief Ajay Tyagi would be delighted to see that his organization is shown as a feared regulator with powers to raid at will and stop trains for searches, its officers menacingly stamping the desk while interrogating suspects in a dimly-lit room.

This is in stark contrast to the market perception of the regulator, which has often been criticized as being leaden-footed, and vulnerable to political interference.

Plugs are sometimes not so subtle: In one of the early scenes, Rizwan’s sister beamingly books him a flight ticket for Mumbai via Paytm after he has a bitter fight with his father. Sometimes they are: In another, Motilal Oswal’s Raamdeo Agrawal explains what’s wrong with Shakun Kothari’s approach to markets, and why investors should instead ‘buy right, sit tight’.

The narrative is thrilling and builds up with gusto, though it does get predictive at times. The music score is decent, but too many songs interfere with the story flow.

Saif slips into his Wolf-of-Dalal-Street character with ease, making an effort to get his Gujarati right. Newcomer Rohan Mehra plays Rizwan with earnestness. As Kothari’s wife, Chitrangda Singh’s character does not have to do much except look good.

On the whole, Baazaar does a credible job of tackling a subject that is inherently complex, and weaving an entertaining story around it to make it palatable for the masses. But it is unlikely to go down in history as being to Bollywood what Wall Street was to Hollywood.