Performance :

'John Day' is a restless sharp drama of the ill-fated and the cursed. This is not the first time Randeep has played a fugitive shadowed by his own past. But this is certainly his most layered character which he performs with the kind of gravelly gusto that allows us to get only as close to the sullen character as he wants us. Towards the end-game when the momentum gets frenzied beyond recuperation, Randeep's character's softer side emerges. He has a brilliantly written monologue with a comatose character where we get to know how much this brutal man loves his woman.

Yup, this man can die for money and for love. It's a dichotomous character torn between self-abnegation and vendetta. In a way Randeep character plays a mirror-image of Naseer's banker gone amok. This is not the first time that India's most vaunted actor has played a wizened common man pushed to a corner by the monstrous corruption in out socio-political system. Remember Neeraj Pathak's 'A Wednesday'? Here In 'John Day' the terror that Naseer's character battles is far more personal, and hence in many ways, much more moving and compelling. His greatness as an actor doesn't come in the way of letting the character of the common man have his say in the most natural way possible.

It is very difficult to speak out openly about the characters and their motivations without giving away the plot. 'John Day' is the kind of clenched yarn that makes you forget that yawning distance between cinema and the audience. You become one with the character's battles, without getting judgemental over their actions. Some of the things that the characters do are unmistakably brutal. An innocent woman's head is shattered by a hammer, a man's tongue is bitten off and another man's neck is also bitten off. It's a cold brutal world with no comic relief, at least none where you laugh out loud at the ironies of life. 'John Day' brings the indomitable Naseeruddin and the intriguing Randeep for a taut cat-and-mouse chase that stays a step ahead of the audience right till the shattering end-game. While the two principal actors get under their characters' skins, other actors seem equally at home in this inky kingdom of greed and gluttony.

Vipin Sharma and Makrand Deshpande are very engaging in their supporting parts. They make doom seem anything but dull. But the film's third hero is Sandeep Chowta's background score. It creates a world of emotions beyond the spoken words for Naseer and Randeep. This is a world where there is no escape from sorrow and grief. Enemies are clobbered and butchered mercilessly. Not because they deserve to die. Yet due to reason that life is as randomly brutal as we make it for ourselves. And cinema such as this reminds us that moral values of good, evil, justice and comeuppance mean nothing to those who have nothing to lose.