Raghav Juyal's Parvaiz, in The Ba***ds of Bollywood, was right when he said, "Saara Bollywood ek taraf aur Emraan Hashmi ek taraf." As a Hashmi admirer myself, I nodded my head in agreement when Parvaiz praised the actor — I was in total agreement. Hashmi had a raw, primal energy during his "serial kisser" days. He was a bit rough around the edges, but that roughness gave him a cheeky appearance. He was volatile — always on edge. An angry Emraan Hashmi character used to set his life and screen on fire. The version of Hashmi you see nowadays is assured and gentler. His performance has become quite controlled, quite subtle. His rage might not exactly set the screen on fire, but it has a different kind of intoxication. Hashmi has truly grown into an actor — one who knows just how much to act for the movie and for the audience. He looks comfortable, and with minor changes in his tone and his expressions, he foregrounds his characters' inner thoughts and intentions.
In Suparn Varma's Haq, Hashmi becomes Abbas Khan and wonderfully brings out the many shades of a father, a husband, and a lawyer. With a boyish grin, a soft tone, and warm eyes, Abbas beholds Shazia Bano (Yami Gautam Dhar), his wife. To convey his frustration with Shazia, he adopts a frown and a deep, dismissive voice. And in the courtroom, Abbas mocks Shazia with a snobbish attitude and a sneering smile. Despite the tension between him and his wife, the character is still a man who cares for his children and attends a funeral when someone close to Shazia dies. Abbas's eyes almost fill with tears when he sees his and Shazia's older son pulling away from him. The pain he feels is genuine, and Hashmi, overall, provides Abbas with shades of humanity.
Of course, credit should also go to writer Reshu Nath for creating a character like this. By telling Shazia's story, she thankfully doesn't take the easy route by plunging Abbas into the depths of villainy. Nath is critical, all right, but she targets all those religious men who wield religion as a tool to suppress a woman's voice. When Shazia quotes from the Quran to prove herself right, the conservative Muslim men attack her for being immodest and impolite, as they don't have solid arguments to tackle her logic. For Nath, Shazia is a hero worth listening to because she has read all the texts, all the scriptures, and has not embraced her identity through the words of a godman, an Imam, or a priest. If Haq is a message movie, its message is an urgent call to read — to read the holy texts of your own faith before someone else twists them to enslave you, to turn you into their blind devotee.
Nath almost succeeds as a writer, but some of her choices are too obvious and clumsy. I rolled my eyes when Shazia inquired about the three pressure cookers because I immediately figured this point would come up later during the marital conflict. The courtroom scenes, on the other hand, are too...neat. They are not written or filmed like a verbal battle; they feel more like educational sermons, but those sermons are often rousing. Still, my biggest gripe with Haq is that it doesn't give voice to other perspectives, such as those of Bela Jain (Sheeba Chaddha) and Shazia's kids. Bela's assistant initially criticizes her for ruining Shazia's life for her ambitions. Does Bela actually take the case to advance her career? If yes, does she change gradually when she spends more time with her client? What exactly does she think about the whole case as a human being who also exists outside the court's boundaries? Shazia's kids go through extreme stress because of the familial conflict, but their afflictions are merely discussed in a line or two through Shazia's speech.
It's Gautam, then, who helps you overlook some of these flaws through her acting. I have always been fascinated by her eyes. In a heartbeat, they can make her seem a saint or a devil. It's in those eyes that change begins—before it reaches her face or her expressions. When Shazia delivers her Supreme Court speech, we are moved not only by her words but also, simultaneously, by Gautam's delivery — her precision, her memory. Varma, however, undermines the scene with silly directorial choices: he says, "Pay attention, this is pure gold. Look closely," then cuts to the judge, whose face remains cartoonishly stoic. Yet Gautam carries the scene through to the end with dignity. In fact, Haq works due to Gautam and Hashmi. The movie, ultimately, belongs to its two leads, who elevate conventional material into something genuinely moving.
Final Score- [6.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times