Adi (Vijay Varma) is a rookie police officer in Mumbai, who is assigned by his superior officer Khan (Neeraj Kabi) to help seek out an axe-wielding hit man named Shiva (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), who is working for a gangster known as the Slum Lord. On one extremely rainy night, Adi chases down Shiva and corners him in an alley. Adi is now left with the decision whether or not to shoot Shiva, though it quickly turns out that all actions have their consequences. Monsoon Shootout is a multi-path crime thriller, which takes a look at all the possible outcomes of the choice Adi has to make during this rainy showdown. This narrative style is set-up in an opening scene conversation between Adi and his mother, where she tells him the different types of paths Adi can go on in his police career. Adi is a righteous individual, who is not supportive of the way Khan frequently takes the law into his own hands on his quest to take down the Slum Lord. However, no matter how good Adi’s intensions, the right choice isn’t always the best one. A film that comes to mind while watching Monsoon Shootout is Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, since both films would rewind back to the beginning and allow a different choice to be made. Of course, unlike Run Lola Run, Monsoon Shootout is a much more gritty and realistic film, which includes many scenes of violence. The choose-your-own-adventure style plot of Monsoon Shootout allows the film to play with the concept of destiny, since each scenario has some of the same outcomes, even though Adi took a different path to get there. Altogether, Monsoon Shootout turned out to be a quite intriguing and well put together multi-path crime thriller.8 | LIKED IT
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