Black Friday (2004 film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Black Friday (disambiguation)
| Black Friday | |
|---|---|
 Banner of the movie Black Friday |
|
| Directed by | Anurag Kashyap |
| Produced by | Arjun Bagga Arindam Mitra |
| Written by | Hussain Zaidi Anurag Kashyap |
| Starring | Kay Kay Menon Pavan Malhotra Aditya Srivastava Kishore Kadam Gajraj Rao Zakir Hussain Dibyendu Bhattacharya |
| Music by | Indian Ocean (band) |
| Cinematography | Nataraja Subramanian |
| Editing by | Aarti Bajaj |
| Release date(s) |  2004 (premiere)February 9, 2007 August 13, 2004 (Locarno International Film Festival) |
| Running time | 143 min |
| Country | India |
| Language | Hindi, Urdu |
| IMDb profile | |
Black Friday (Hindi: ब्लैक फ्राईडे) is an Indian movie about the 1993 Mumbai bombings by director Anurag Kashyap. Based on a book by S. Hussain Zaidi, this film tries to recreate those events and the intense feelings that followed them.
Contents |
[edit] Introduction
Black Friday is film based on the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai which many believe were organised as retaliation for the Bombay riots which left over 1,500 people dead. It was featured at the Locarno Film Festival and received widespread praise.
Black Friday was not released in Indian theaters for 2 years, as on the eve of its release a petition was filed by the persons named in the film, the alleged perpetrators of the crime, seeking a stay. Their argument, which was upheld by the court [1], was that the film would bias public opinion against them and hence affect the outcome of the verdict which was still pending in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case. The film was received rapturously at previews in India and abroad. It got a United Kingdom release in 2006 and was released in India on February 9th, 2007. This was nearly 2 years after the film was shot, when the Supreme Court of India gave it the go The accused had been charged with TADA, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act, which carries a maximum sentence of death.
[edit] Plot
 |
The tense of this article or section is not suitable for an encyclopedia. Please consider copy editing to past tense if historic, present tense if not time-based (e.g. fiction), or future tense if upcoming. |
At the start of the film (March 9, 1993), Gul Mohammed, a small time thug, during his chance-arrest confesses that there is a conspiracy underway to bomb major locations around the city at Nav Pada police station, Bombay. But the police dismisses his confession, and three days later, Bombay is torn apart by a series of explosions leaving 257 dead, and close to 1400 injured. Investigators discover that the bombs were made of RDX, smuggled into the city with the aid of customs officials and the border police. In turn, the film traces the motive for the blasts to the Bombay Riots, which is the term used to describe the bloody warring between the Hindu and Muslim communities in the period from December 1992 to January 1993, which left over 1500 people, mostly Muslims, dead. The 'Bombay Riots' was an unprecedented outburst of violence and abuse, resulting in enormous emotional trauma and property loss. Tiger Memon (Pawan Malhotra) is an underworld don whose office is burnt to cinders during the riots. The suffering of the Muslim minorities in the riots incites a meeting of underworld leaders in Dubai, who then take it on themselves to seek retribution. Tiger Bhai (as Tiger Memon is called) one of the chief inflamed suggests an attack on Bombay as the strongest message of retaliation, thus leading to Black Friday, March 12, 1993.
Asgar Muqadam, Tiger Memon's secretary is arrested on March 14, 1993. He is beaten till he gives all the information he knows about the bomb blasts, and that intiates a full police inquiry. Deputy Commissioner of Police Rakesh Maria (currently Inspector General of the Maharashtra Police) is put in charge of the case. The next piece in the puzzle is the arrest of Badshah Khan (Aditya Shrivastava), one of the henchmen who had left Bombay and gone into hiding but on May 10, 1993 is eventually worn out by the running and is found by the police.
Badshah Khan realizes that there is no justification for his acts, and decides to become a police witness. On November 4, 1993, the police file a charge sheet against 189 accused. The Central Bureau of Intelligence takes over the case.
Then on August 5, 1994, Tiger's brother, Yaqub Memon, willingly turns himself in to the authorities. In a candid Newstrack interview on national television Yaqub states that it was Tiger and his underworld associates who orchestrated the conspiracy. And Tiger Memon has now disappeared.
See: S. Hussain Zaidi - Black Friday - The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts, Penguin Books India (2002), ISBN 0-14-302821-9
[edit] Cast
- Vijay Maurya - Dawood Ibrahim
- Pavan Malhotra - Tiger Memon
- Aliya Curmally - Shabana Memon
- Imtiaz Ali - Yakub Memon
- Kishore Kadam - Dangle
- Kay Kay Menon - Rakesh Maria
- Aditya Srivastava - Badshah Khan
- Pratima Kazmi - Badshah's mother
- Pranay Narayan - Imtiaz Ghavate
- Nawazuddin - Asgar Mukadam
- Dibyendu Bhattacharya - Yeda Yakub
- Gajraj Rao - Dawood Phanse
- Ragesh Asthana - Mohammad Dossa
- Zakir Hussain - Nand Kumar Chougale
- Raja Chaudhary - Mushtaq Tarani
- Aditya Bhattacharya - Sheikh Aziz
- Ashraf Ul Haq - Bashir Khan
- Pankaj Jha - Anwar Theba
- Bobby Parvez - Rakesh Khurana
- Jeetu Shastri - Tainur
- Loveleen Mishra - Newstrack Interviewer
[edit] Trivia
- The DVD (Eagle Home Entertainment) synopsis contains the name of Tiger Memon incorrectly spelled and printed as 'Tiger Menon', which is in fact a Malayali (Kerala) Hindu name and not the Muslim name 'Memon'.
