The Miranda Brothers Is A Grocery List Of Sitcom-Like Twists, Jerky Storytelling & Wasteful Performances

“KISMAT toh roz bistar badalti hai,” an older brother tells his younger, innocent sibling this as an adage to steer him across the choppy waters of life in Jio Cinema’s The Miranda Brothers. Rather than cuffing life with the conviction and desperation of purpose, it’s maybe better to simply sieve it through the gaze of circumstance. Let life come to you as it is, so to speak. Brothers betrothed to contradicting moralities, isn’t exactly a new premise. One of Hindi cinema’s most iconic films, Deewar, offered clinching evidence of how a post-Independence India became home to diverging ideals about life. Between survival and ambition, India fractioned into two. Becoming a metaphor as old as time, and possibly as relevant as any other, even today. The Miranda Brothers might have its eye on that glowing re-affirmation of a relentless yet complicated feud, football as the circuit, but barely lights the room of thinking it must have originated from.

Harshvardhan Rane and Meezan Jafri play Julio and Regalo, respectively; two aspiring footballers who also happen to be brothers (the latter adopted). Both are overseen by a doting and socially conscious mother Susan. Set in Goa, the family – the missing father is never quite mentioned – lives at the crossroads of streetwise thuggery, drug gangs and a sport that promises agency and relief. The only caveat is that Julio, the older of the two, is a bit hazily wired in the head. He is given to bouts of anger and rage; he stares life in its eyes with the nonchalance of a drugged bike rider. Regalo, on the other hand, is principled, kind and in a behavioural sense, as Christian as they come.

To the backdrop of this straightforward tale of resilience there is the sub-plot of the mother, actively protesting against the encroachment of Goa’s lands by greedy politicians and corporates. It’s a thread, that the film throws in your face when you least expect it. For the sake of the plot, the mother is mowed down by a car. Foul play is suspected. Which makes the ordeal to discover her killer and dispense the frantic football, that bit pushy if not exhilarating. For all of its writing pits, ordinary direction and underwhelming sound design, the film at least kicks up a few gears by letting go of a harmless bystander. Harmless because the writing is so thick-skinned it barely lends the people a face, let alone an entire personality.

There is a determined coach, a two-faced common friend, a local henchman, a wise talent scout and more than a decent block of talent to call upon. Except the passivity with which the film is strung together, lights up the stitches more than the wounds. At least the latter would have supplied character, definitive traits or even a hint of curiosity. Here the protagonists munch food, talk shop and disburse pearls of wisdom, as if it were a salad of things tossed together, as opposed to a platter someone specifically chose to arrange. Football, the supposedly redemptive thing about the ‘originality’ of this particular project, is adequately dusty, rough and violent. But it simply doesn’t kick you in the gut, not at least with the subtext of a ‘lesser’ sport; something that can be put down to the football-loving ecosystem of Goa. Almost as if the pointy nail wants to hide from the door.

The Miranda Brothers isn’t always a lost cause. It’s peculiar in its insularity, its lack of ethos – how can someone make Goa look so wry and parched without a moment’s catharsis is baffling – but it’s also fairly stimulating as a raw, untrained neighbourly battle between opportunities and opportunism. Rane, who has made it a habit of essaying frothy, cool men sans philosophical substance, looks the part but isn’t given much to do. The death, the mystery, the revenge are all plot shrugs rather than narrative pivots. The film keels over them instead of using them as the hinge to swing to the other side.

If for nothing else maybe The Miranda Brothers can be lauded for platforming a frontier sport. Even though the film fails to install football as part of Goa’s DNA, at least, it romantically dresses the sport as a material and societal good. But what makes an under-nourished sport find its roots in a coastal state? How intertwined is the land’s culture with the illicit trades it has unwittingly become a host to? Insiders, outsiders, identities, frictions, and gentrification. The film opens neither the envelope nor the window to understanding any. There is this blurry appearance of a cricketing bully, the tantalising shadow of what might eventually become the texture of the film. And yet, it’s just a grocery list of sitcom-like twists, jerky storytelling and wasteful performances that like all most Goa plans, could have been shelved.

The Miranda Brothers is currently streaming on JioCinema