A Wednesday (2008)

Action, Crime, Drama |

A Wednesday! is a Indian thriller film written and directed by Neeraj Pandey. It stars Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher. Set between 2 pm and 6 pm on a Wednesday, the film depicts an about-to-retire police commissioner narrating a sequence of events that unfolded on a particular Wednesday. There does not exist any written record. The awareness of the incident exists only in his mind and in those of several individuals who were involved, willingly and unwillingly, and how those events affected the lives of all the concerned people. It inspired the Tamil and Telugu simultaneously made films Unnaipol Oruvan and Eeenadu (both 2009), and the Sri Lankan English film A Common Man (2013).

Mumbai police commissioner Prakash Rathod (Anupam Kher), resting after a jog, describes in a voice-over that he is going to retire the following day. He goes on to describe the most challenging case he faced in his career.

An unnamed man carries a travel bag, assumed to contain explosives, in the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station and proceeds to hide the bag in the restroom of a police station opposite to the Mumbai Police headquarters. He then arrives on the rooftop of a building under construction where he has set up his base of operations, equipped with several sim cards, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets. He calls Rathod and informs him that he has placed five bombs in locations throughout Mumbai and has programmed them to explode simultaneously within four hours unless the Commissioner gives in to his demands and releases four militants.

In response, Rathod immediately alerts his team involved in intelligence research and surveillance, tapping all the available resources to trace the location of the caller. Meanwhile, the caller tips off television news reporter Naina Roy (Deepal Shaw), telling her to reach the police headquarters immediately as it is going to be “the most important day of her life”.

Director: Neeraj Pandey

Writers: Neeraj Pandey

Stars: Anupam Kher, Naseeruddin Shah, Jimmy Sheirgill, Aamir Bashir, Deepal Shaw, Kali Prasad Mukherjee, Mukesh Bhatt

►Cast:

Anupam Kher	…	Prakash Rathod
Naseeruddin Shah	…	The Common Man
Jimmy Sheirgill	…	Arif Khan (as Jimmy Shergill)
Aamir Bashir	…	Jai Singh
Deepal Shaw	…	Naina Roy
Kali Prasad Mukherjee	…	Ibrahim Khan (as K. P. Mukherjee)
Mukesh Bhatt	…	Khurshid Lala
Gaurav Kapoor	…	Ajay Khanna (as Gaurav Kapur)
Chetan Pandit	…	Chief Minister
Virendra Saxena	…	Babu (as Virendra Saxsena)
Snehal Dabi	…	Sambhu (Electric Baba) (as Snehal Dabhi)
Rohitash Gaud	…	Ikjhlaque Ahmed (as Rohitashv Gaur)
Vijay Bhatia	…	Mohammmad Zaheer
Aayam Mehta	…	Chief Minister’s PA
Rajendra Chawla	…	PA Assistant
Alok Narula	…	Raj Sharma (Cameraman)
Parth	…	Anuj (as Apurva Mehrotra)
Seema Malik	…	Anu
Vicky Ahuja	…	RDX Supplier
Namrata Sawhney	…	Common Man’s Wife
Parag Tyagi	…	Aakash
Manoj Verma	…	Chouhan
Bhagwan Tiwari	…	Whattkar
Danish	…	Rafiq
Jaywant Wadkar	…	Traffic Constable
Sabudeen	…	Constable 1275
Dhananjay Singh	…	Mhatre
Jitendra Kumar	…	Taxi Driver
Jani Karan	…	A Man Behind Sambhu
Mahesh Kanual	…	Stranger at Police Station (as Mahesh Kanwal)
Siddharth Bajaj	…	Young Man in Train

Sources: imdb & wikipedia