The trailer of Qaidi Band is out. It opens with a factoid on undertrials who have been locked up for no fault of their own, with newcomer Aadar Jain’s voiceover in the background.
“Undertrials are those prisoners who are waiting for a verdict from the court. This story is about these innocent undertrials,” he says, with the scene shifting to a bird’s eye view of a jail with funky guitar riffs in the background. Since when do jails have a fun tone to it?
We’re introduced to Sanju, played by Jain, who is engaging in catch-the-rat game with other prison inmates betting their money on the lead actor’s win. Like most of Bollywood hero’s introductory scene, Sanju wins and is considered to be quite a big deal among the other inmates. They fawn all over him and what not.
The next scene gives us the female lead, Bindu, played by Anya Singh, who engages with ruffians twice her size but is still a tough girl.
The inmates are told that there will be a male-female orchestra for the upcoming Independence Day celebrations, setting the premise for the leads to meet, interact, and fall in love.
Having witnessed some bad auditions, the warden then chooses seven undertrials, including the two leads. Thus forms the Qaidi Band — translated to the Prisoners Band.
The three-minute trailer shows the youngsters frolicking about in jail under the pretext of practicing for the celebrations. The band becomes so famous for their patriotic numbers, that news channels from outside talk about them and bring their band to the fore. And their song goes viral and hits all the headlines. This also gives them hope that they’ll be free soon.
But political bigwigs get involved and delay their release. Portrayal of police brutality and violence while in custody is shown, and the seven undertrials are left battered and rotting in their cell.
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Jain’s Sanju, like the typical intrepid hero, has a solution for it all — singing more and creating a noise. If only! And the seven sing, dance, and continue screaming auto-tuned versions of “I am I am I am India” towards the end.
With Jain given his Bollywood break through a Yash Raj production, there’s a lot of risk taken especially when his elder brother Armaan tried his luck with Lekar Hum Deewana Dil (2014) but failed.
Last month, Aadar was officially introduced to the world through a series of tweets on how he belonged to a family of actors and was born to do this. Needless to say, it didn’t go down too well in social media, where he had to even clarify that he wasn’t just another product of nepotism several times.
Watch the trailer here: