Issaq

Issaq is a 2013 Indian Hindi-language romantic film directed by Manish Tiwary and produced by Dhaval Gada and Shailesh R. Singh. The film, written by Padmaja Thakore-Tiwary, Manish Tiwary and Pawan Sony, was released on 26 July 2013. The film stars Prateik Babbar, Amyra Dastur, Rajeshwari Sachdev, Ravi Kishan and Makarand Deshpande as main characters. According to BoxOfficeIndia.com, the film was a box office disaster.

Plot

This is the story based on two land mafias of Banaras: Kashyaps and Mishras. They have a throat-cutting competition to gain control over the land and fight brutally over it.

Cast

Prateik Babbar as Rahul Mishra
Amyra Dastur as Bachchi Kashyap
Ravi Kishan as Teeta Singh
Rajeshwari Sachdev as Paro Kashyap, Bachchi's step-
Makarand Deshpande as Baba
Neena Gupta as Amma
Prashant Narayanan as Naxal leader
Sudhir Pandey as Vishwanarayan Kashyap, Bachchi's
Sandeep Bose as Manohar Mishra, Rahul's
Prashantt Guptha as Preetam
Amit Sial as Murari
Vineet Kumar Singh as Bihata
Yogesh Suri as Prince
Malini Awasthi as Manorama
Evelyn Sharma as Roza
Yuri Suri as Minister
Akhilesh Jha as Mahender
Saurabh Yadav as Paras
Mehdi as Nandkishore
Ishtiyak Khan as Reporter
Parvez Fazal Khan as Surta
Pradeep Ghosh as Mishrilal

Marketing

The film was promoted in TV serial Amita Ka Amit. The producers promoted the movie through Banarasi paan at the leading malls in Mumbai.

Soundtrack

Sachin–Jigar composed the songs while the background score was composed by Prashant Pillai.

Critical response

The movie received generally negative reviews. Piyasree Dasgupta, in a review for Firstpost, summed it up as: "One wonders … what is a greater tragedy—Romeo and Juliet or what Issaq made of that classic love story." Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express find it to be "without a singular voice of its own" and that ultimately "it drowns in its own noise." The review in The Times of India calls out the poor acting by Babbar and Dastur's lack of charisma. "Manish Tiwary's Issaq lacks vibe, soul or depth needed for a classic love story. With incoherent narrative, unsketched characters, wispy dialogues, one good melody in the whole ditty ; pointless shooting, gold-plated bandooks and bombs galore—Tiwary misses every target. There are movies beautifully adapted from Shakespeare's works in the past, but none that tragically assault your creative, poetic or cinematic senses." Sarit Ray, writing for the Hindustan Times, thinks "seldom have been associated with as nonsensical a mess as Manish Tiwary's Issaq" and that "It's a pity that Issaq joins remarkable films like Maqbool, Omkara and Angoor on the list of Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare. In a time when works of literature are judged by their TV and film versions, it could even give the Bard a bit of a bad rep."