Title: Bhopal:
A Prayer for Rain
Country: India
Score: 6
This is a fictionalized
docudrama about the 1984 Bhopal industrial accident, following a range of
characters in and around a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the days leading up
to a chemical gas leak that kills thousands. The best aspect of the film is its
fair-mindedness, asking viewers to consider characters and decisions that would
typically be portrayed a lot less sympathetically: the consequences-averse CEO
who built the factory up from nothing and really does want the region to prosper,
the frighteningly underqualified rickshaw driver turned safety engineer who
can’t say no to a job that would put food on his family’s table and provide his
daughter’s dowry and an unselfconsciously manipulative – but in a charming way –
journalist who has cried wolf too many times to stir up serious concern.
But while the characters are
often interesting individually, they fail to mesh, in part because the casting
is so scattershot: Martin Sheen in full-on corporate American mode, teen
TV-star Mischa Barton as a fashion reporter who contributes little to the
narratives, Kal Penn alternatively glib and serious, Indian comedian Rajpal Yadav
in a questionable dramatic role, some evil British dude acting generally
callous and colonial, etc. Ultimately the film is competent and admirable, and
at its best provokes both sobering thought and strong emotions, but it doesn’t
particularly distinguish itself.
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