A Wednesday (2008)

Another interestingly uninteresting title, this time with the partial excuse of coming from India, where the narrator pronounces "Wednesday" the way it's spelled (the dialog is about 20% English). I guess the idea is, in clickbaity terms, "It was just another typical Wednesday...or was it? You'll be surprised how much happened in one day!" The depicted events take place over a mere four hours, in fact, with a runtime of 104 minutes, counting the credits.

The relative brevity isn't the only factor to separate AW from other Bollywood works I've seen. It's a thriller with little comic relief and no musical numbers. Netflix describes it as "action-packed," but by modern American standards, that's misleading. We get a few acts of violence, especially consisting of a cop beating the daylights out of suspects until they spill the beans, but most of the thrill comes from bomb threats. Specifically, after about 20 minutes of four seemingly unrelated plotlines, a man tells police he'll blow up Mumbai if they don't deliver four al-Qaeda-linked prisoners.

The man, late in middle age, comes across as quite harmless, even a tad pathetic, when not deliberately projecting a menace. The credits identify him only as "the Common Man," and the narrator says that his name would give too big a hint of his religion. Despite the heavy-handed attempt to convey that almost anyone could do what he does with a little Web research, a cracker who fails to trace his calls deems him "the best" at it. How undermining.

At a time when U.S. police get a bad rap, it's interesting to see how Indian police might operate. Those beatings I mentioned are largely public. More importantly to the story, the chief keeps the bomb threat under wraps, goes against protocol, complies with the Common Man's demands, orders a fake accident, lies in paperwork, passes up an opportunity to arrest the Common Man, and ultimately never files the case. I'm not so sure he made the wrong choices under the circumstances.

Characters cite some pre-9/11 dates for terror attacks, but it's clearly a film for the post-9/11 world. It taps into widespread fears of danger in everyday life and frustration at the low progress of those who should prevent such disasters. In the end, the fictitious case is cathartic. Perhaps few people could accomplish as much as the so-called Common Man, but he gets us thinking and engenders a certain amount of sympathy, if not empathy. Whether you like what happens or not, I'd say it's worth a viewing.