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MOGUL MOWGLI
Director: Riz Ahmed, Alyy Khan, Anjana Vasan, Nabhaan Rizwan, Aiysha Hart, Sudha Bhuchar, Kiran Sonia Sawar, Hussain Manawer, Dolly Jagdeo, Mitesh Soni, Ahmed Jamal, Jeff Mirza Cast: MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:29 Release Date: 9/3/21 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 2, 2021 After 15 years trying to make it big, a rapper finally catches a break. Zed (Riz Ahmed) is offered a gig to be the opening act for a more popular rapper's European tour, and as much as the protagonist of Mogul Mowgli has to sacrifice for his career and this opportunity, his troubles haven't yet started. Co-writer/director Bassam Tariq's movie is about a stubborn man, pushing himself forward as he pushes others way, who can no longer rely on his talent, his drive, or even his body to keep him going. Living in New York City and returning home to London to visit family before the tour begins, Zed, born as Zaheer, begins to feel numbness in his leg. After an altercation with a fan outside a mosque, Zed collapses in pain. He awakens in a hospital bed, and the doctor's tell him that his muscles are failing. The screenplay here, written by Tariq and Ahmed, is primarily about Zed's inability to realize the severity of his condition, until his deteriorating body makes that impossible. Confined to a hospital room and unable to stand of his own power, the rapper is forced to confront his family's judgment, the moves of a rival toward taking his gig, a rising sense of humility, and the history and culture that he has forgotten or abandoned in his search for fame and success. The movie, in other words, tries to do a lot with very little. Ahmed's performance, so energetic before Zed's collapse and so indicative of real change as the story progresses, does much of the work here, since the screenplay only touches upon assorted ideas through dialogue and enigmatic dream sequences of Zed's past and the history of his family, who survived the partition of India and have worked hard to create success out of little in London. Zed's father (played by Alyy Khan) doesn't accept his son's work, partly because he doesn't understand it but mostly because, in the father's mind, it means giving up that history. There's little doubt that Tariq knows what he wants to say with Mogul Mowgli, as the generational and cultural divide between Zed and his family become even more important to this story than the rapper's health concerns and personal doubts. In terms of communicating that history and message, though, the movie is too ambiguous to match its thematic ambitions. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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