Movie Review: Rajkumar Roa’s Trapped

Movie Review: ‘Trapped’
Rating: 3/5
Director: Vikramaditya Motwane
Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa

Trapped Movie Trailer

Trapped, Touted to be India’s first survival drama, Vikramaditya Motwane places his central character in a state of entrapment amidst the chaotic city of Mumbai. It is indeed a brave attempt of him to weave such a story that’s rarely told in Bollywood. The director gets most of the things right but at the same time, he does take a few cinematic liberties that are just too loud to be ignored. Had these shortcomings been tackled, the film could have been a much refined by-product. Nevertheless, Trapped still manages to win you over with its content and Rao’s top-notch act.

It’s a claustrophobic world where Siddharth Diwan’s camera relies mostly on natural light. He deliberately restricts your vision and makes the outside world look like a place where everybody is on an auto-pilot mode. Nobody knows and nobody cares either about what’s happening inside an abandoned building.

It’s this feeling of being lonely and left-out that makes Trapped a scary experience.

Motwane has a minimalist approach and he allows the audience to hold on to a particular idea or emotion. His framing allows us to come near the subject and feel the anxiety. Rao and the camera cross each other so many times that you feel as if you are watching Shaurya’s ordeal from close quarters.

In absence of many props, the onus falls onto Rao to keep the viewers engaged. He is earnest and brings a certain kind of honesty to Trapped. Be it Gangs Of Wasseypur, Shahid or Aligarh, he always turns his regular guy features into an asset.

Rajkummar Rao delivers yet another applause worthy act as a helpless man that keeps you hooked right from the first frame. Even with limited dialogues, space and voice, his take on Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest in real world is worth-watching. His metamorphisis from a timid man who refrains from eating meat to someone who doesn’t battle an eyelid when it comes to hunting pigeons to satiate his hunger pangers in extreme conditions is commendable and the man gets his craft bang on!

Trapped has fewer dialogues and plays more with actions and emotions. Siddharth Diwan aptly captures the claustrophobic feeling of the film through his lens. However, the film could have been snipped by a few minutes to make it more edgy.

Motwane and Rao form a lethal team that keep us hooked for 102 minutes, quite easily. Trapped is unique because it’s unlike any other one-room drama. It remains a personal story, more like a leaf out of Shaurya’s life than a cinematic celebration of a survivor.  Alokananda Dasgupta’s music gels well and the background score perfectly fits the theme.

Trapped is a defining film for Motwane who has become braver in using small spaces and silence. It’s the beginning of a style that we must see in his next films.

Allow yourself to get ‘trapped’ in Shaurya aka Rajkummar Rao’s world if you are seeking for something way different from the regular popcorn entertainers. This one needs a viewing purely for Rao’s stellar act.