Maqbool

Storyline

Vishal Bhardwaj's 2003 crime masterpiece Maqbool kicked off his legendary Shakespearean trilogy by brilliantly adapting Macbeth into the ruthless, superstitious Mumbai underworld. Irrfan Khan delivers a career-defining, tour de force performance as Miyan Maqbool, the loyal, right-hand enforcer of aging underworld don Jahangir Khan, known respectfully as 'Abbaji' (Pankaj Kapur in a National Film Award-winning masterclass in understated power and casual menace). Maqbool is secretly in love with Nimmi (Tabu in an unforgettable, seductive turn as Lady Macbeth), Abbaji's young mistress. Nimmi insidiously fuels Maqbool's ambition, urging him to murder Abbaji in his bed and seize the syndicate. Two corrupt, astrology-obsessed police inspectors, Pandit and Purohit (Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah playing the legendary Three Witches), predict that Maqbool will indeed take over the empire, but his reign will end in blood. When Maqbool executes the assassination, he is consumed by guilt, visual hallucinations, and the mutiny of loyal gang members. Maqbool established Vishal Bhardwaj and Irrfan Khan as titans of realistic Indian cinema. With unforgettable turns by Pankaj Kapur as the ruthless underworld don Jahangir Khan (Abbaji) and Tabu as the seductive Nimmi, Maqbool proved that classical literary tragedy could seamlessly illuminate the gritty realities of Mumbai's underworld, becoming a timeless classic of contemporary world cinema.