Sometimes being out of the loop, not following every promo and trailer, can be so beneficial for a film aficionado. I didn't expect Imtiaz Ali's Highway to be much more than maybe a strange, Stockholm syndrome inspired kidnapper-kidnappee romance. The pairing of Alia Bhatt and Randeep Hooda seemed strange, and considering her last performance that I saw was the wooden, unbearable turn in Student of the Year, I wasn't precisely hopeful that she actually had considerable acting chops. While every shitty Bhatt movie in Randeep Hooda's oeuvre is warmly embraced by such fans as myself, it's safe to say he's not universally appreciated. Imtiaz Ali is not infallible, either, and it's been in the past few years that his films and scripts have been particularly critisised for the way they portray female protagonists.
Yet, Highway manages to be a very human picture that gives its downtrodden heroine a lot of agency in a difficult situation, and thus allows Alia Bhatt to show what she can do, when acting outside Karan Johar's vapid female stereotypes. Aided by Ali's best script in a long while, this ends up being less of a kidnapping romance and more a film about two damaged people, trying to re-discover what their home in the world might be. It is, in a world, beautiful.
The story reveals all this in a very gradual way, and is all the better for it. Due to that, however, I'm forced to discuss some spoilers, so before the jump, I'll just say this: I loved this movie. It's maybe my favourite Imtiaz Ali picture right after Jab We Met, even if the two deal in two very different genres, obviously. I'll probably have to rewatch it to see how I properly rate it among my favourites, but thus far, it's stayed with me, it certainly impressed me, and I can't think of too many bad things to say about. I'd certainly recommend it.
Spoilers after cut.
