Somewhere in the middle of this purported mystery-thriller, the cop in charge of a murder investigation, Kabir Deshmukh (Sharman Joshi) talks about how the case was like an onion, unravelling peel by peel. Well, that’s just a polite way of justifying a prolonged script in which one thing leads to another and the film keeps stretching on what with one inane twist too many. By the end of it almost everyone on screen seems complicit in the crime so much so that you are sure that even the chaiwala on the fringes of one of the frames would eventually get implicated in the murders committed live on GTN TV channel.
However, most of all, this onion-peel theory is actually a pointer to the utter ineptitude of the inspector himself who couldn’t join the obvious dots at the start of the case; instead the significant details come to him at the fag end of it.
But then this is a true blue B (or is it C) grade Hindi film and ours is certainly not to reason why. So we have the cop who lives with an irritating little daughter in Peace Haven — the landmark Heritage bungalow at Bandra’s Perry Cross Road. There’s the media moghul Rahul Oberoi (Rajneesh Duggal) whose TV channel gets hacked for telecasting real-time murders. Siya (Sana Khan) and Ranvir (Gurmeet Chaudhary) are lawyers, who, when not arguing against each other in court are cavorting in colour coordinated costumes to remixed versions of songs like Pal pal dil ke paas from the 1973 Dharmendra-Rakhee starrer Blackmail. Incidentally, these love birds even coordinate colours for a dinner date. He, for some strange reason lifts a tyre in one love song and she puts their cozy, together photos on the wall with schmaltzy messages like: “Don’t judge me”, “Realise I am not perfect”, “Love me for who I am”, “Don’t let me walk away”. Well, if I were him I’d have surely walked far, far away from her.
She claims that as the legal head she gets a six figure salary from the media moghul. What she seems to get actually are terrible passes. “You are sick,” she says. “Your love is my cure,” he comes back. Meanwhile, the camera keeps moving exploitatively on the female anatomy, especially in item songs like Mahi Ve ( Kaante , 2002). Women are defined by heaving bosoms and bare midriffs; almost all the men come with severely gelled hair.
Meanwhile, gems in the name of dialogue keep flowing on. So, in the finale, in which a lot of glass is broken and some blood split, the cop, for some strange reason, advises one of the characters: “ Ab tumhein dard leke jeena padega (You will have to live with pain).” What of the pain inflicted on the audience, you wonder.
Most actors, save Sharman, are in urgent need of voice training and guidance in enunciation. Bachcha (child) gets pronounced as bacha (save), kabr (grave) sounds like a mix of kabaad (junk) and cupboard. To make matters worse there are glaring errors in the language itself. It could be “more clear” or “clearer” but not “more clearer” as the film has it. And pickpocket is just fine, why pickpocketeer? Logicless, well what is that? A word used in the court proceedings in the film that could well define the film itself. Illogical!
Director: Vishal Pandya
Starring: Sharman Joshi, Sana Khan, Gurmeet Chaudhary, Rajneesh Duggal
Run time: 136 minutes
