The criminal in power

In my film, the villain was always smiling,��� says E Niwas, director of Shool. The villain was a criminal politician who, Niwas says, ���knew that things are completely in his control.
In Shool, Niwas portrayed the frustration of an honest cop who tries to go by the book, and eventually kills the criminal politician in the state assembly.
���Movies on the subject of the honest cop against the corrupt politician had already been made ��� Ardh Satya and Pratibandh are fine examples ��� but with Shool, we wanted to attempt a different story, that of an honest cop who, in that kind of society, wanted to go by the book.And the very name of Bihar evoked exactly the kind of image in one���s mind that we needed for the narrative. One tends to exaggerate incidents and characters in such stories, but actually, the ground reality and the movie had one thing in common ��� the villain, the politician, wasn���t really harming the main character, for he knew that the entire city, its people, the cops, the system were in his control, so the damage he caused was psychological. He was always smiling,��� he says.
But why the RDB -style climax ��� after all, shooting the politician is entirely unreal, isn���t it? ���See, the honest cop finally loses everything ��� his wife, his daughter, his job ��� and decides to give it right back to the politician. For that reason, we decided to make a strong, shocking climax, where he enters the assembly and in front of the other politicians, kills the villain. The backdrop of the assembly was deliberately chosen; one for visual impact, two, we wanted to shock the audience,��� says Niwas.
Manoj Bajpayee, who played the cop, says that despite cinema conveying strong images of the criminalisation of politics, the change in popular perception will not come from films. ���When I decided to play the character, it was because I believed in him. But I don���t think that cinema has the ability to change the perception of the masses. When they watch a movie, it stays with them for only a few minutes. I���m strongly against criminals in politics, but that���s not because of the films I watched or did. It���s because of my education and the value system that I imbibed at home. Which is why the change in mindset will have to be in school, in families and at the level of the community,��� he says.