Omerta

It's unfair to expect Mehta to know all answers, but perhaps the writer duo could have created a few more poignant moments. Omerta is a film true to its intent, which will benefit many by its record-keeping. But yes, that feeling of wanting to know more and have more cinematic moments lingers.

Omerta's pace is so unrelenting and Rao's acting so immersive that it is impossible to turn away from the screen for a single moment of the film's compact 97 minutes and 37 seconds. To call it gripping might be an understatement.

With crisp editing and a runtime of 97 minutes, the film never lets you lose attention and the gripping narrative style ensures you are on the edge throughout. Rao proves his mettle once again as he smoothly gets into his cold character who can switch accents and personalities with equal ease – and does it all for the sole purpose of serving the 'holy war'.

Omerta is a pain-lashed brutal and blunt exposition on terrorism. It offers no hope for the end of violence. In fact it tells us that violence won't go away even if we want it to.

Omerta is not a film for the faint-hearted. The jodi of Rajkummar Rao and Hansal Mehta has again proved that they have an hunger for brave and insightful cinema.

Omerta is worth a dekko if you like terror sagas. Interspersing news footage — from the '90s until the recent Mumbai 26/11 attacks — with a glamourised version of Omar's life, it does manage to provide an overview of a contemporary terror hero. The likes of him literally have world-safety hanging perilously by a thread. You may as well know his face!

Omerta, a biographical drama on British-Pakistani terrorist Omar Saeed Sheikh directed by Hansal Mehta, opens with unidentified wails flooding a pitch-black screen. This might be the maker's way of informing us that the story – as is often the case, but frequently neglected by Hindi cinema's hasty biopic directors – began long before the film that will attempt to encompass it.

Omerta has enough elements to keep you glued to your seats. Rajkummar Rao is outstanding and yet again nails another character coming out of a Hansal Mehta film.

The director has not invested much screentime into how Omar plans his complex actions or what drove him to such abhorrence. So while Mehta gets the mood right, and Rajkummar works wonders with his limited material, 'Omerta' fails to stir you emotionally.

Omerta is an honourable film, but it often looses track of itself as it goes off on tangents so obscure and weak.

It's a shame really that Omerta lacks depth, never giving an insight into Omar's criminal designs. As a thriller, it's pacy and yet, distinctly half-baked and stiff. I assure you, this movie could be about one of most dreaded men of our times but this film tells us nothing about the man that a quick google search wouldn't. As for Rao, a friend rightly puts it - He was good even in Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana; what's special about this then?

The word 'Omerta' means a code of silence that members of crime groups adopt when caught by the law. This film shows us how Omar was happy to kill in the name of religion. The staccato storytelling style and the constant shift between past and present is distracting at best. Unfortunately there is no emotional takeaway from the story, so you watch the stabbings and the kidnappings wondering 'what was that?'

Ultimately his portrait of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh inspires neither fear nor disdain. It leaves you empty and wondering as to what drew Mehta to this guy in the first place.

Omertà is too class-appealing to make any impact at the box-office. It will, therefore, flop at the turnstiles. It has some hope in the very high-end multiplexes, that too, just in the first weekend.