Page 3, directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, revolves around the life of high profile people and their relations with media in Mumbai. It is based on Page 3 journalism, a glamour beat of print journalism, which covers stories, gossips about high profile people, well known personalities and social butterflies.
Madhavi Sharma, played by Konkana Sen Sharma, is an aspiring journalist, who comes to Mumbai, looking for a job. She is hired by Deepak Suri (Boman Irani), an editor of a newspaper. She is assigned to cover celebrity news and articles. She enjoys being a part of the glamour world, till things change when she learns about the dark side behind the lavish lifestyles of the celebrities and shifts to crime beat to do meaningful stories. With Vinayak Mane (Atul Kulkarni), crime beat reporter, who burns midnight oil to get his stories, she roams around the city searching for stories and realizes the real worth of journalism covering stories that are heart wrenching.
The plot takes an interesting turn, when Madhavi investigates a bomb blast story and learns how high- profile personalities are directly or indirectly involved in the crime in the city. When she wants to probe further into the bomb blast case, she is asked by her editor to go back to her original beat and cover parties and is shocked to see the ACP partying while the city was reeling under the effects of the bomb blast.
The movie highlights the nexus between the high profile personalities with the media heads when Madhavi’s expose of a high profile socialite Ramesh Thapar’s involvement in molesting children from rehabilitation homes is put into the garbage and she is asked to quit.
This movie has some meaningful dialogues. The conversation between Madhavi and Vinayak during their stroll at the beach after she was fired is worth mentioning. Vinayak explains to Madhavi how she should tell these stories to people. Vinayak says, “we have to be in the system to change the system” working with honesty is good but what also matters is our wisdom and trust.
Page 3 has some good music and deep meaningful lyrics too. The song “Kitne Ajeeb Rishte Hain Yahan Pe” sung by Lata Mangeshkar gels well with the theme of the movie.