Mumbai Saga Teaser: Where Are The Women?

The Mumbai Saga teaser, starring John Abraham in the lead, dropped Wednesday. The Sanjay Gupta-directed action flick boasts of an impressive ensemble specialising in the genre, from Mahesh Manjrekar to Suniel Shetty. And yet, the minute-long trailer seems to be missing something. A common-enough something called women.

There is a jarring absence of the female cast in the Mumbai Saga teaser. That perhaps can be partially pegged to the fact that the number of women leads in the film can be counted off two fingers: Kajal Aggarwal and Anjana Sukhani. But since Aggarwal's name is proudly flaunted on the official teaser release, the assumption that it would feature her - if only for a glimpse or two (as goes the trend with Bollywood action films) - isn't entirely unfounded.

Mumbai Saga Teaser Skips Female Cast: Reduced To Tropes Yet Again?

Gupta's films, largely in the Kaante and Shootout at Lokhandwala vein, are known for their testosterone-charged hypermasculine portrayal of the Indian underworld where more often than not women aren't the focal centre. They either make arm-candy appearances or play the good ol' disposable love interest.

The problem isn't that women aren't given equal spotlight in films of this genre. Mumbai Saga, after all, is set in 1980s Bombay when crime wasn't notably a female occupation. Force-fitting elements out of context doesn't make for a good film anyway. So Aggarwal or Sukhani's absence from chase sequences around town is probably explainable.

That then raises the alarm: what role do they hold in the film?

Hindi action films have infamously had the propensity to further stereotypes about women, showing them as exaggeratedly dependent on their (usually) criminal partner's love for survival. They exist as a trope that keeps the otherwise bad guy in touch with his humanly sensitive side.

It's an impressive responsibility to shoulder, but not enough. Women are entitled to way more than just being moral compasses.

The argument that Aggarwal may find screen space in the longer trailer, whenever it releases, is half-baked. If director Gupta felt, as he did in 2019, that she has "been nothing short of brilliant in her performance," then she probably deserves space for that brilliance to come through from the first poster to post-film success.

Watch the Mumbai Saga teaser here: 

Views expressed are the author's own. 

Image Credit: Sanjay Gupta Twitter + Kajal Aggarwal Instagram