Aapla Manus review: Mixture of crime mystery and family drama makes it worth watching

Director Satish Rajwade is known for making films for a family audience. Even his crime thriller about lookalikes, Gaiir (2009), and Popat (2013), a film on AIDS awareness, catered to the family audience.

Continuing in the same vein, Rajwade is back with Aapla Manus. The film could be called a crime mystery, but the director ends up giving us a family-orientated message as well. This merging of genres is what makes the film worth watching.

Aapla Manus is based on the Marathi play Shatkon Trikon and revolves around the incident of a senior citizen, Aaba, falling off his balcony and going into a coma. Police officer Maruti Nagargoje (Nana Patekar) investigates the case. He soon begins to suspect the old man's lawyer son (Sumeet Raghavan) and his teacher wife (Iravati Harshe). But is his suspicion right?

Aapla Manus wastes no time in getting on track. The main incident happens right in the first scene and the investigation begins. The introduction of various characters and their definition happens in the course of Nagargoje's investigation. Nagargoje’s eccentric ways and his confrontations with the couple not only provide thrills, but also regular doses of humour. Amidst this, a twist just before the interval hightens interest in the plot. The twist is masked nicely till just before the break.

While further developments and twists keep you engaged after the break, the film also shifts smoothly into family drama mode without the audience being able to pinpoint when exactly the filmmaker changed gears. Thankfully, the family drama isn’t the usual tearjerker kind we are subjected to in daily television soaps.

Though the films works as a social messenger, it has some glaring flaws as far as the mystery angle is concerned. The story focuses on the old man's fall at the beginning and on finding out whether it was an attempted suicide, attempted murder or just an accident. When the answer is finally revealed at the end, you remain unconvinced because of the gaps in logic. And as the incident is at the heart of the tale, you can't overlook this flaw.

Similarly, a couple of important incidents lack common sense. For example, a man poses as a journalist and requests a woman to reveal her family issues to write an article. Without cross-checking his identity, she willingly discloses family matters to a complete stranger. You also find yourself questioning Nagargoje's methods, which appear far-fetched.

As the film's plot is based on a play, most of the action is indoors. The cinematographer makes good use of the interiors, so much so that you don’t realize the film is taking place indoors. There is a scene in which the audience learns of the presence of another person in the home simply through smart use of the camera.

In the initial few minutes, there is heavy use of a background score. Fortunately, that is not the case with the rest of the film, which does not have a single song as that could have interrupted the flow.

Aapla Manus has the right casting. Patekar is perfect as the eccentric and arrogant police officer. There are moments when you even applaud his rude cussedness. But at times, his tone of voice doesn’t sound natural while in other scenes, he seems to try too hard.

Sumeet Raghavan is known to be a fine actor and he proves it again as he portrays the different shades of his character. Iravati Harshe yet again reminds us of her immense talent after fine performances last year in Kaasav and Monsoon Shootout. Ajay Devgn, who is also the producer of the film, makes a brief and unnecessary appearance at the end.