This drama starts off promisingly enough, with a snappy, self-aggrandizing voiceover introducing our protagonist Arjun (Abhishek Bachchan). He’s a Don Draper type: works in advertising, is at the top of his game, loves to tag along while throwing pearls of wisdom and instruction to his team. “I want at least 17 seconds with the cheese pull,” he insists to a minion working on a pizza commercial. As in Mad Men, his home life is not so secure, even though he feels like he is doing a great job and speaks proudly of being a weekend dad who shows up for his daughter when it matters. However, it is clear that pride precedes the fall.
The trap in question here is a sudden diagnosis of cancer, out of the blue. Arjun is given about a hundred days to live. Being the kind of tenacious man who refuses to see himself as a statistic, he decides he will fight. Here the film begins to form a controversial narrative in cancer supporter circles: some find the idea of cancer something that can be fought against vigorously. Others find it offensive, suggesting that when someone dies of cancer there is an element of not having fought hard enough, of having been a quitter in some way, rather than having been subjected to an incurable and often fatal disease. Certain that he is involved in a war that can be won by sheer force of will, Arjun embarks on a series of operations.
The film hits some standard weeping movie tropes, including his physical transformation and the ebb and flow of various relationships. Arjun struggles with a version of suicidal thoughts: at one point he plans to drive off a cliff, “like Thelma and Louise”.
The problem with all this is that the film spends about as long establishing Arjun’s life and personality before the diagnosis as his pizza ad did with its emphasis on cheese pulling. Mad Men sent Don Draper into freefall after many seasons, and that’s what made his disintegration so compelling. A film doesn’t have such a luxury in terms of running time, but a little more setup would have paid off in terms of the subsequent journey. The fact that it’s based on a true story doesn’t help much either, unless maybe you knew the real man.