A hard-hitting film that left an impact

As his maiden-directorial Mardaani 2, clocked one year on Sunday, director-writer Gopi Puthran opened up about the impact that his hard-hitting film has left on Indians. Gopi, who with Mardaani 2 has given Indian cinema one of the finest thrillers based on shocking real-life crimes, said, “Talking about India would be very broad, I would say whoever it resonated with, I can share that insight because there were messages that poured in, whosoever connected, did so because there was a certain honesty with which the message was put across.

The unpretentiousness of putting across the message and packaged with a gripping story, I think the combination of both the factors is what has resonated,” added Puthran. Mardaani 2 managed to bring more spotlight to the issue of crimes committed against women in India.

“When people consumed Mardaani 1 and 2, the common responses were ‘wow, what a gripping film!’ A story which grips you and is not just preaching to you throughout the film, which I think is a stand out factor when it comes to the Mardaani series,” the writer-turned-director said.

“It is, as I like to say about Mardaani, it is completely in a space which speaks about women, their issues and it is in that domain,” he added. Gopi further spoke about how he and the project might have pushed Rani creatively and how she relished the challenges.

“I’d like to believe that it pushed her, because Rani, the kind of work that she has done, the kind of characters that she has played, I hope Mardaani is up there somewhere, at least from her perspective, because it is from a consumers perspective for sure,” he said.

“I think the way it pushed her is not just the performance, I think that for her finding the correct performance and finding the correct character comes very naturally to her, I think somewhere what pushed her would be the action sequences in terms of the underwater sequences for that matter,” he added. Today marks the first anniversary of Mardaani 2.

The film that was released last year shocked and gripped the nation with its brilliant storyline. Inspired by shocking true crimes against women, the edge-of-the-seat thriller saw Rani in a race against time to capture a brutal serial rapist who systematically targets women. The first installment of the crime drama was released in 2014 and was appreciated by critics and moviegoers across the nation.