The film's dullness is less Sircar's fault and more that of the contemporary Western cinema he draws on so heavily, with its fascination with "gritty" "realism" and the idea that a shaky handheld camera is the entirety of cinema verite. The camera shakes plenty in "Madras Cafe," particularly in the action scenes, which feature plenty of jump-scare bullet ricochet sound effects. But the absence of any sense of where anyone is in relation to anyone else undermines the realism, making the scenes chaotic and ultimately enervating rather than thrilling.
The actors mostly do their best with difficult material. John Abraham plays his stereotypical role as well as he can, and while unspectacular he isn't bad at all. Nargis Fakhri suffers as a British journalist (with, alas, Fakhri's own American accent) given nothing to play. In her defense, it's hard to tell where bad writing ends and bad acting begins in "Madras Cafe." It's virtually identical to the kind of assembly-line American "serious" would-be prestige movies that directors like Ed Zwick and Taylor Hackford crank out in misbegotten doomed bids for Oscar nominations, and just as forgettable in the particulars.
It's really a shame "Madras Cafe" is so inert, because, as above, the things it's about—espionage, geopolitics, corruption—are interesting, and the specific area in which all those subjects play out is one that hasn't been overdone as a film subject, especially outside of South Asia. If, somehow, "Madras Cafe" leads to a movie being made about the Sri Lankan conflict that's actually good, then it will have accomplished something, but until then, it's really not much.
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