This is the story based on two land mafia's of Banaras; Kashyaps and Mishras. They have throat cutting competition for gaining control over land and fight brutally over it.
In this original Indian adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet directed by Manish Tiwary, we see the story transposed to Banaras and its neighbouring areas that are witness to violence unleashed by sand mafia controlled by urban elite and equally violent retaliation by Naxalite armies. The sand mafia is run by two influential Banarasi families, Kashyaps and Mishras, who are at brutal feud with each other. Kashyap has an 18-year-old, pretty and innocent daughter Bachchi from his first wife, Bachchi's role is played by Amyra Dastur who marks her debut in this film. On the other hand, Mishra's son Rahul is a good-looking teenager with predictable interests for a boy of his background - Girls & Guns! Things change when the battle-hardened and pleasure-seeking Rahul and romantic yet head strong Bachchi fall in love. Disregarding the consequences, the young lovers choose go ahead with the feelings of their hearts. What follows is a high octane action-filled drama.
Marketing
The film was promoted in TV serialAmita Ka Amit. The producers promoted the movie through Banarasi paan at the leading malls in Mumbai
The movie received generally negative reviews. Piyasree Dasgupta, in a review for Firstpost, summed it up as: "One wonders … what is a greater tragedy—Romeo and Juliet or what Issaq made of that classic love story." Reviewing the movie for The Indian Express, Shubhra Gupta find it to be "without a singular voice of its own" and that ultimately "it drowns in its own noise." The review in The Times of India calls out the poor acting by Babbar and Dastur's lack of charisma. "Manish Tiwary's Issaq lacks vibe, soul or depth needed for a classic love story. With incoherent narrative, unsketched characters, wispy dialogues, one good melody in the whole ditty ; pointless shooting, gold-plated bandooks and bombs galore—Tiwary misses every target. There are movies beautifully adapted from Shakespeare’s works in the past, but none that tragically assault your creative, poetic or cinematic senses." Sarit Ray, writing for the Hindustan Times, thinks "seldom have been associated with as nonsensical a mess as Manish Tiwary’s Issaq" and that "It’s a pity that Issaq joins remarkable films like Maqbool, Omkara and Angoor on the list of Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare. In a time when works of literature are judged by their TV and film versions, it could even give the Bard a bit of a bad rep."
