Rahasya: The suspense works, the secret doesn’t

January 31, 2015 06:44 pm | Updated February 05, 2015 09:35 pm IST

A still from the film Rahasya

A still from the film Rahasya

How much can you fictionalise an ongoing murder investigation? Is it fair or sensitive to the parents and relatives of the child coping and dealing with the loss? The strange and mysterious Aarushi Talwar murder case has inspired at least two films based on the botched up murky investigation.

Manish Gupta’s Rahasya does a few things to distance itself from the real case. First, it shifts the scene of crime from Noida to Mumbai, changes the facts of the case a little (the body of the domestic help is not found until much later in the film and not on the terrace) and there’s a larger-than-life gun-fire and people getting bumped off one by one to add to the mystery.

These departures from truth keep our interest going as we uncover secrets bit by bit through the eyes of the walnut-munching investigator (Kay Kay Menon).

IsaiGenre: Thriller Director: Manish Gupta Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Tisca Chopra, Ashish Vidyarthi, Mita Vashisht Storyline: When a young teenager is found murdered and her boyfriend goes missing, her surgeon father becomes the prime suspect

While the censors had cleared the film on finding it dissimilar to the real case, the lawyers of the Talwar family argued that there are over a 100 similarities. The ethics of adaptation apart, the film is pretty racy and keeps us intrigued all throughout till the resolution when it falls apart completely with a rather contrived explanation that labours hard to connect the scattered dots that made the mystery exciting in the first place.

It helps that the film has Kay Kay Menon in charge of the investigation and the reliable actor channels all his screen presence and gives the character enough quirk to power the narrative to its very end. Since whodunnits are about the resolution, the ending does rob the film of its merits. Unfortunate, especially since the film did keep us guessing with its suspenseful storytelling only to wrap things up rather unconvincingly.

While it may not be an entirely satisfying experience, you just might want to see Rahasya for Kay Kay Menon and to prep yourself for Vishal Bhardwaj’s Nyodda (or how Noida is pronounced in that part of the world) which seems to be set closer home to the investigation… literally.

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