Mai Review: What You Know About Story?

By Jivika Last updated Sep 24, 2022

Sheel Chaudhary (Sakshi Tanwar), a middle-class mother, watches as her daughter, Supriya (Wamiqa Gabbi), is struck by a truck in this drama. Soon after the accident, she realizes that it isn’t just a hit-and-run case, but something nefarious is at work, which fuels her drive to uncover the truth about what happened.

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Mai Review

It follows in the footsteps of ‘Mom,’ starring the late Sridevi and Raveena Tandon’s return picture ‘Maatr,’ a crime-and-revenge thriller from 2017. In many ways, they’re similar, especially in central conceit.

A poor and unassuming mother is seeking retribution for her daughter. Sheel’s life is turned upside down when she sees the sad death of her daughter Supriya in this series. At first, it appears to be an accident, but Sheel soon realizes something isn’t quite right and that Supriya’s death could have been a planned homicide. After that, she embarks on a journey to uncover the truth.

Parallelly, SPF officer Farooque Siddiqui (Ankur Ratan) is about to reveal the people behind a medical scam and money laundering case led by Jawahar (Prashant Narayanan) and his right-hand woman Neelam.

Who manages the business alongside Raghu (Saurabh Dubey), Keshav, Prashant (Anant Vidhaat), and Shankar (Anant Vidhaat)… (Raima (Vaibhav Raj Gupta). From Supriya’s lover Farooque to Jawahar’s mother’s carer, the individuals in the story all have some connection to the mother-daughter combo.

Two debuting filmmakers (Atul Mongia and Anshai Lal, whose first feature film, “Phillauri,” was released last year) managed to elicit strong performances from their cast. Both Sheel and Supriya, the silent daughter of Sheel, are perfect in their portrayal of their emotions and ideas on film.

High suspense is achieved by showing the protagonist in close-up shots. Tamal Sen and Amita Vyas, who co-wrote this six-part crime drama with Mongia, bring to life the mother-daughter duo’s pain and suffering, human connections and sacrifices, political schemes, money laundering, and much more in this six-part thriller.

OTT crime thrillers like this one use Lucknow, India, as a backdrop to show how good and bad actions in the city affect the life of the average citizen. With a powerful Sheel rage eruption, the first few episodes appear to be on track, but the tale quickly begins to falter.

In terms of linking all of the aspects, the script is well-written. However, it sometimes seems too stretched to hold the audience’s interest throughout the episodes. Because there are several characters and subplots, not everyone has enough time to make an impact.

For example, the past of Kalpana (Seema Pahwa), a victim of an abusive marriage before becoming a criminal, is vague. Due to the informal nature of Kalpana’s story, the audience could not connect with her and Sheel. Sheel’s seemingly limitless abilities, including scaling walls and tricking the masterminds, seem unbelievable.

After all, “Mai” is obsessed with maintaining Sakshi at the center stage, which slows down and, sometimes, detracts from the show’s overall effectiveness. Although a lot can be said about how Sheel’s relationship with her husband Yash and their extended family, including Bhaisahab and Bhabhi as well as their child, has evolved throughout the film, there is also plenty of time to focus on the relationship between Sheel and her constant companion Kalpana (Seema Pahwa).

Even though each episode clocks in at over an hour, Manas Mittal’s editing might have been more liberal and kept the show’s pace up. As a last bonus, it provides plenty of teasers for the upcoming season.

Sakshi Tanwar’s performance as a grief-stricken mother whose misery at not knowing who killed her daughter and why is evident is flawless and dominates the screen. Later, Sakshi’s Sheel, a nurse-cum-caretaker at the nursing home, sets off on a mission to avenge some wrongdoing from dangerous individuals.

Tanwar does much of the heavy lifting, and she’s as credible as the rest of the cast. When she was last seen as Madan Lal’s wife in the Hindi film ’83,’ Wamiqa Gabbi was excellent in her role as a little mute girl who is a victim in the series. As Sheel’s spouse Yash, Vivek Mushran, who plays him, lacks the bulk of the rest of the ensemble, including his relatives.

All the characters are believable and contribute substantially to the story’s narrative. In contrast to Salman Khan’s Chulbul Pandey or any other manly cop, the SPF officer is a straight-shooting police officer who merely knows his profession inside and out. As a result, Ankur Ratan, like Farooque, may look to be an outsider in various action situations.

This is another performance by Prashant that makes us hate Jawahar/Mohandas, who slips into his character’s skin with minimal effort. In her part as Neelam, Raima may be presented as a beauty with brains, yet her expression remains the same throughout the series.

As performed by Anant Vidhaat and Vaibhav Raj Gupta, Prashant and Shankar are twisted characters well-executed by the actors.

As a crime thriller, “Mai” is one of the most harrowing to watch, even when it’s not always easy. With so many people and so many twisted reasons, it’s impossible to keep track of the show’s multiple plot threads. During these interludes, the pace of the play slows, but the tension remains high.