Abhishek Bachchan plays Bengali NRI Arjun Sen, who is living the American dream. He is a marketing hotshot whose career and life are affected when he is diagnosed with cancer early in life. Around the same time, he goes through a divorce. Co-parenting his daughter Reya is taking its toll. He only has 100 days to live but survives against all odds. He goes through about 20 surgeries and at the end of it all, he is shown completing a marathon, huffing and puffing, living life to the fullest and on his own terms.

The film is based on the life of a real-life cancer survivor, a close friend of director Shoojit Sircar. The story highlights Arjun’s complex relationship with his daughter Reya, played at various stages by child actor Pearle Dey and later by influencer Ahilya Bamroo, as a teenager.

The film is a slow burner. It does not dramatically portray Arjun Sen as a hero. Like, say, Anand from Anand (1971), who also never let the disease defeat him, Arjun is a street-smart guy who knows which buttons to push to get his way. He is a motormouth who loves to talk. And am convinced that’s what marketing is – you confuse the hell out of your target audience until they have to accept your argument. He has the ability to laugh at himself. His doctor Jayanta Deb (Jayant Kriplani) feels that he has been manipulated by his patient into performing surgeries. It’s kind of a role reversal. Most often we hear about doctors who force patients into operations. The two form a long-lasting bond, with the doctor even giving the keys to his house to his favorite patient. They become golf buddies and even hang out together. Jayant Kriplani has always been a reliable actor and fits well in a role that requires dry humor.

Arjun is shown to be romantically involved with one of his nurses, Nancy (Kristin Goddard), although nothing is explicitly shown. She saves his life once by performing CPR but also breaks two of his ribs in the process – that’s the kind of bittersweet humor the film serves up. Even if it’s not campy or slapstick, mind you. The humor used by Shoojit Sircar is very subtle. There are no over-the-top laugh-out-loud moments, despite the presence of Johny Lever, who gives perhaps the most restrained performance of his life. It’s all situational, designed to make you smile, rather than laugh. Another scene involves Arjun’s older brother being escorted out of the hospital in a wheelchair as the explanation of the complicated medical procedure got to him. It’s a slice of life movie. And life, as we know it, can be dull and monotonous one moment and can throw us a curveball the next. More than anything, the film celebrates the unpredictability of life.

Child actor Pearle Dey is a joy to watch as a precocious child. She is a natural in front of the camera and so is Ahilya Bamroo, who plays a typical, rebellious teenager with his heart in the right place. Her confrontational scenes with Abhishek, especially where she talks about her anguish at being a child from a broken home are the soul of the film. The closure she finds at the end is a kind of grieving. Abhishek Bachchan has completely thrown himself into the role. The scenes where he goes bald after his first surgery, his eyes looking dead, seemingly not accepting his reality, speak of the actor in him. Later, when he decides to fight, his eyes light up with that determination. The actor has gone all out and played the character, not bothering to look like a star, like a typical movie hero. He embraces both the father and the father jokes with a vengeance. The actor has totally surrendered to the character and we haven’t really seen this side of Abhishek for a long time.

Cinematography by Avik Mukhopadhyay is spot on and some scenes, especially the lake sequences are quite picturesque. Make-up and prosthetics are also top-notch. Is it a perfect movie? Not quite. We don’t see Arjun’s estranged wife even once. He has undergone 20 operations and that she chooses to remain absent from this journey this entire time is something that is hard to understand. The director does not make it clear why this is so. Arjun has lost his job but seems to be doing pretty well for himself. Considering that healthcare is quite expensive in America, where does the money come from for all these surgeries? There are certainly gaps in the story and one feels that rather than tying up all the loose ends, Shoojit Sircar has deliberately scattered them and let us form our own guesses. The film is more of a passion project than a commercial vehicle. It tells a humorous story of human resilience, moving in its own way, without following the rigid norms of film. Watch it for the acting talent on display and for the message it conveys in its own twisted ways.

See also: Abhishek Bachchan undergoes physical transformation for I Want To Talk