Adalat
Synopsis:
Halfway through the film, Amitabh Bachchan is just standing out there in the freezing rain looking totally miserable while wearing this ridiculously bulky woolen scarf that honestly looks like it was knitted out of old carpet scraps, and he's shouting about justice and betrayal at a bunch of completely empty village houses. But to understand why he's out there dripping wet and yelling at nobody, you've got to go way back to the beginning of the movie and look at how this whole mess actually started. Dharam is just a regular, honest village guy who gets pushed around by everybody until he decides to leave everything behind and head to the big city to make something of himself, which is a pretty standard setup for a lot of classic bollywood movies from that era. So then he arrives and things don't go according to plan because the city is rough, but he manages to reinvent himself as a wealthy and successful man named Raju, though he still keeps his old village roots close to his heart. The funny thing is that he runs into this woman who turns his world upside down, and that's when things really start rolling.
Neetu Singh shows up playing this bright, lovely character who brings a lot of energy to the screen, and her chemistry with Amitabh is pretty fun to watch, especially during that one random picnic scene where she's wearing this bright yellow polka-dot suit with giant sunglasses and she drops a spoon in the grass and complains about ants for like three solid minutes while the plot just completely pauses. Anyway, she's totally smitten, and he's trying to keep his complicated double life a secret, but you know how hindi films are, so secrets never stay buried for long. Right after that whole picnic ordeal, the story decides to sprint through the next five years of his life in about forty seconds where he gets framed for a murder he didn't do, loses all his money, gets arrested, escapes from jail, and finds a long-lost brother. Just like that.
That is where Waheeda Rehman enters the picture, and she doesn't mess around at all because she plays this fierce, dignified woman who basically takes control of the courtroom drama portion of the narrative. Adalat really leans heavily into her star power during the second half, and she delivers lines with such intensity that you almost forget how ridiculous the whole murder plot actually is. The trial scenes drag on forever with people shouting objection every two seconds, and Dharam has to prove his innocence while dodging crooked cops and former business associates who want him locked away forever. He puts on this ridiculous fake mustache and a dusty leather jacket to sneak back into his old mansion at midnight just to steal back a incriminating red diary, but he gets caught by the butler who just stands there gasping and dropping a ceramic teacup that shatters into a million pieces on the marble floor. Total chaos.
So then there's a big showdown at an abandoned brick kiln on the outskirts of town where all the bad guys gather to settle the score once and for all, and punches are thrown left and right while dramatic thunder crashes in the background. It is loud. The main villain gets cornered near a massive pile of wet clay, and Amitabh gives him this intense glare before pushing him backward into a muddy puddle, and then the police sirens start wailing in the distance. The very last shot of the movie shows Amitabh walking slowly down a dusty highway away from the camera with his hands shoved deep into his pockets as the sun sets behind the hills.
The dubbing on the village elder in the opening reel is genuinely terrible, echoing slightly off the stone walls of the courtyard as if recorded in a stairwell across town during a lunch break.
Narendra Prasad’s direction in Adalat is not great, not bad, just there. You get the sense he showed up, pointed the camera roughly where the actors were standing, and hoped Amitabh Bachchan’s sheer kinetic gravity would pull the frame into shape around him. It usually does, but there are stretches where the momentum completely dies out in a dry, sun-baked patch of rural misery.
Bachchan plays a dual role here as a simple village postman and his own fierce, educated barrister son, a conceit that Hindi cinema has relied on since the black-and-white era, though Deewaar handled the split much better. The transition from the rural father, culled by exploitation and silent suffering, to the slick city lawyer seeking retribution is handled with characteristic intensity, even when the script throws logic out the window.
Neetu Singh and Waheeda Rehman are relegated to the margins of a sprawling narrative that clearly cares much more about courtroom grandstanding than emotional depth for its female characters, which is frustrating given their respective talents. Rehman brings a quiet dignity to a motherly role that has zero surprises in it, while Singh pops up to offer occasional emotional support before the plot sweeps her away into the background again.
Kalyanji-Anandji’s score features a couple of heavy, brass-driven cues that repeat themselves until you want to scream, a minor mechanical annoyance that keeps dragging you out of the drama. The cinematography washes everything in that flat, overexposed seventies stock that makes every outdoor scene look like it was filmed under a magnifying glass on a Tuesday afternoon.
Bollywood movies from this decade often struggled to balance the demands of social justice melodrama with commercial song-and-dance routines, and Adalat stumbles over those exact same seams. The themes of rich landowners crushing the peasantry are laid on with a trowel, lacking the sharp satirical edge found in Hrishikesh Mukherjee pictures from the same period.
What keeps you watching past the two-hour mark is the sheer physical presence of the leading man, who throws himself into the courtroom shouting matches with a frightening amount of energy. When he straightens his black coat and leans across the wooden barrier to demolish a corrupt witness, you forget about the clunky editing and the predictable plot turns.
It is easy to pick apart the contrivances in the second half, where coincidences pile up like rusted cars in a junkyard, but the sheer velocity of the thing carries you through anyway. The ending arrives abruptly without tying up all the loose threads, leaving you with a lingering sense that the editor just ran out of film and called it a day.