Mardaani

<p>The film opens with a secret police operation orchestrated by Shivani Shivaji Roy, a dedicated Crime Branch Senior Inspector of the , in order to catch a pimp named Rahman from his hideout. She barges in with her team and arrests Rahman, and rescues his mistress. Shivani lives with her husband, Dr. Bikram Roy, and teenage niece, Meera. Prior to the film, she rescued an orphaned girl named Pyaari from being sold by her uncle, and started looking after her like her own daughter. One day, Shivani finds out that Pyaari has been missing from her shelter home for five days and begins an investigation, where she finds out that the mastermind behind this kidnapping is a Delhi-based kingpin named Karan Rastogi ( ), who runs a cartel involving child trafficking and drugs. Shivani takes the task personally, going beyond her job and duties to nab Karan. Shivani forces Rahman to reveal the names of Karan’s associates and comes across Sunny Katyal (Anant Vidhaat Sharma), a car-dealer who operates Karan’s trafficking business in Mumbai. Karan discovers that Shivani is monitoring his cartel’s activities and tries to have Katyal killed for becoming a liability. However, Shivani saves Katyal, and he agrees to help her nab Karan. Determined to catch him, Shivani tracks down Karan’s aide, Wakeel. Karan, angered, makes sure that Pyaari is sold and raped every day. As a warning, he spreads fake news that Shivani’s husband has misused his profession as a doctor to molest a female patient, causing Bikram to be thrown off-duty. He then chops off one of Pyaari’s fingers and sends it to Shivani’s house in a gift box. Meanwhile, Karan’s right-hand man Mattu (Aman Uppal) gets a contract to host a party full of prostitutes from a man named Tandon on behalf of a minister in Delhi, Taneja ji. Mattu also kills one of the girls in Karan’s brothel at his orders when she contracts , further scaring Pyaari. Shivani travels to Delhi and sets up a trap involving decoy drug dealers from Nigeria, who pretend to offer expensive and rare South American cocaine to Karan and Wakeel. As they are negotiating, Shivani barges in with her team. While Karan escapes, Wakeel tries to erase evidence by destroying his mobile phone’s SIM card, then commits suicide. Shivani and her Delhi-based teammate Balwinder Singh Sodhi track down a tailor who knew Wakeel for a long time. He reveals that a prostitute named Meenu Rastogi was Wakeel’s closest associate. Shivani’s continued investigation leads her to Karan’s house, where Meenu, revealing herself as Karan’s mother, sedates her. She is abducted and brought to Karan’s party. There, Shivani reunites with Pyaari, where she and the other girls are forced to work as . Karan invites Taneja ji and allows him to rape Shivani. However, she escapes and ruthlessly beats Taneja before taking him hostage. Shivani single-handedly confronts the situation, forcing Karan into a small room and rescuing the girls. She challenges Karan to fight her when he teases her for being a woman and beats him. Feeling that he might escape the law, given the corrupt police and judicial system, she hands Karan over to the girls, who beat him to death. Subsequently, Sodhi and the entire team barge in and arrest Mattu, Tandon and Karan’s gang members. Meenu is also attacked by the girls and gets paralyzed by shock while Taneja survives before being sentenced to life imprisonment. Mukerji, who played the role of a crime branch officer in the film, met the Chief as part of research for her role. It was speculated that her role was inspired by IPS officer Meera Borwankar, who was also an investigation officer in the Mumbai case. For her role, Mukerji trained in , a street-fighting, self-defence system developed for the Israeli military. The film’s soundtrack was composed by . The official trailer of the film was released on 24 June 2014. The required that the use of a and scene depicting rape of a teenage girl be removed from the trailer. Because of the film’s social message, the film has been given tax free status in by Chief Minister in its first week of release. This was followed by and also giving the film a tax free status. In , gave the film adult Certificate but objected on few scenes. The Board asked for seven cuts and wanted certain scenes to be blurred, but the film makers were of the view that “it would lead to loss of the essence of the narration of the movie” and hence decided not to screen the movie in Pakistan. Mardaani premiered in Poland at Warsaw’s Kino Muranów theatre, one of the oldest art house theatres in the country, on 29 January 2015. The film received a standing ovation from the audience, and Rani Mukerji was congratulated by one and all for her exceptional performance and for being a part of such a relevant and sensitive film. gave Mardaani four stars out of five and said Pradeep Sarkar “offers a pragmatic and compelling story of what it is to chase down the bad guy with Rani Mukerji as an inspector who simply won’t give up”. also gave the film four stars out of five, praising the use of the film’s soundtrack, saying, ” cleans out the noises and yet retains a high decibel of authenticity in the complementary relationship between sight and sound”. of wrote, “[E]nacting the part of the tough-talking cop who goes in pursuit of those who run the sex trafficking ring, Rani strikes a true to life, forceful pose and also lends her character the much-needed intensity, strength and dignity. The agony that drives her forward is visible on her face and is one of the prime reasons that makes this story easy to swallow”. Koimoi states that s net of 40 was double the amount invested in the film. In December 2018, announced that a sequel will be made with writer Gopi Puthran directing this time, and reprising her role. The filming began in March 2019 and was released on 13 December 2019.</p>