Casting light on a real story

An honest customs officer’s crusade against corruption — good choice for a subject, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui playing Costao Fernandes, the unsung hero — great casting too. But what lets debutante director Sejal Shah and her film ‘Costao’ down is a lacklustre screenplay.

The film opens with the voiceover of a child, who is Costao Fernandes’ eldest daughter. She introduces her father with a glowing tribute: “Costao was like 24-carat gold, no impurity… Costao didn’t work for rewards, his work was his reward.”

Hearing the child speak about her father in the past tense makes me wonder if I am in for a flashback. But, no. This real-life story progresses in real time, amid more of such contrived dialogues (“I am 100 per cent pure, pesticide-free, organic”; this one is from Costao himself). There is no mistaking that the screenplay tilts towards the hero and the dialogue writers are on an overdrive to make their ‘real hero’ a ‘reel hero’.

Set in the Goa of the 1990s, which I gather from the use of landline telephones, the film revolves around Costao, who on a tip-off goes all by himself to seize 15,000 kg of gold being smuggled into the state by mobster D’Mello (Kishore Kumar G). Things go wrong as D’Mello’s younger brother Peter (Hussain Dalal) gets accidentally killed by Costao.

A brief chase, a surrender and several court trials later, Costao is pronounced not guilty. Through all these hardships, his colleagues stand by him, while his family falls apart. He gets transferred to Bombay and his wife, along with his three children, stays back in Goa.

Though shot majorly in Goa, the film doesn’t capture the beautiful state but for a few shots of beaches here, a dash of the sea there and some car chases on those winding roads. Even the characters are not all that Goan — most of all, Costao. Though the star actor tries to get the lingo right, his accent remains the same, of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, which we all are familiar with and have come to love.

As a government officer who refuses to back down even when his life is in danger, he is effortless. His expressions of anger, anguish and joy are measured. He can make his viewers feel what he feels, with or without dialogues. But he looks out of place while pulling off stunts like jumping onto a moving car and slitting a man’s throat, or chasing goons with the song “Pedro ab jayega tu kahan…” playing in the background. Not because he lacks the talent for action scenes, but simply because these scenes are badly executed. And if that’s not bad enough, he is made to mouth dialogues in which ‘duty’ rhymes with ‘beauty’!

The ‘beauty’ in question is Priya Bapat, who plays Costao’s wife Maria. Priya is a fine actress who made a lasting impact in her earlier OTT outing, ‘City of Dreams’. In front of Siddiqui, she holds her own, though her character arc remains limited to just a nagging, discontented wife of a workaholic officer. Among the supporting cast, all Kishore gets D’Mello to do is frown and look menacing, while Gagan Dev Riar as a corrupt CBI officer stands out.

The trials involving Costao Fernandes, first in the sessions court, then the high court and finally the Supreme Court, go on for eight years and deserve an insightful look, especially as the apex court judgment is hailed as a landmark ruling. However, the writer and the director limit their gaze to just a cursory glance.

It seems the makers were in a rush to reach the endpoint. The point where once again the child narrator, who is now a teenager, takes over: “Costao was not a selfish husband, but he was definitely a selfless customs officer. He wasn’t an absent father but an awesome father. He was not a murderer, he was a hero; he is a hero!”

Present tense! Attention to detail, finally! Last heard, Costao, now 83, is enjoying the spotlight the movie has brought him.

Movie Review