Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Long series of twists and turns -- Framed

Genre: Thriller

Director: Chetan Shah

Cast: Karthik Kumar, Lekha Washington, Malavika, Tinnu Anand, Dhritiman Chaterji

Storyline: A prank played by a group of college students goes wrong and they become suspects in the murder of their dean.

Bottomline: Lot more goes wrong with the film than just the prank.

The camera frames reality as well as the mind’s eye.” The line flashes on screen right at the start of the English-language movie ‘Framed’ by Chennai-based director Chetan Shah. And you know immediately t hat it’s going to involve: (a) one character running around with a camera and (b) generous use of the shot-with-a-handy-cam look (complete with the red ‘record’ spot at the bottom of the frame).

Both elements show up just minutes into the movie as a group of new students at a fictional college called Prayog Niketan is filmed by an ex-student shooting a documentary. We learn that this is a college where students take on wildly ambitious individual projects to work on. And that the young leads, especially Rohan Gupta, who plays a computer geek, appear rather stiff and awkward on screen. You hope that’s just a clever directorial touch; freshmen at a college being asked to talk about themselves in front of a camera are bound to be self-conscious, after all. Unfortunately, the acting remains uninspiring even after the registers shift – from documentary to fictional.

The plot, very quickly, goes like this: A group of college students sets out to play a prank on their dean’s car, which goes horribly wrong when the old man ends up dead. Now they’re stuck with a corpse and a bag full of money, and they’re the prime suspects.

A part of the prank is captured on film—but is that going to help or hurt them? The premise, though not hugely original, has promise. However, the screenplay fails to generate any real dramatic momentum or suspense. It really isn’t helped by dialogue in which the humour often seems forced. For example, a main character, asked for his cell phone to call the police after the dean’s body is discovered, quips: “Why? Are you going to call for pizza?”

The movie does have its moments—Shaun Williams in his over-the-top performance as the zany Zen (goofy sidekick alert!) draws a few giggles, and Karthik Kumar manages to infuse his cool dude character with some charisma when the meandering screenplay allows him to. Lekha Washington shows promise but tries a little too hard to make her character spunky, and just ending up annoying at points. Tinnu Anand is utterly wasted as a lecherous professor, and Dhritiman Chaterji tries valiantly in his role as inspector, but is let down by a script that has him running around in circles.

At a little over two hours, the movie seems to go on for ever. Somewhere in the second half, the story actually takes an unexpected turn and things appear to get interesting. Sadly, it soon devolves into an interminable, implausible series of twists and turns that continues long after one’s store of patience has been exhausted.

The clunky philosophising about reality, sprinkled here and there, and how the camera can construct it fails to make an impression. All that’s left to say on the making this film is —Who framed Chetan Shah?

Sathyam Cinemas is holding special morning shows of ‘Framed’ on September 1 and 2, at 10.30 a.m.

DIVYA KUMAR

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail