First we are shown of a bomb explosion in Hyderabad during a ‘supposed-to-be’ kite festival. Then the narrative moves forward in time where Anamika (Nayantara) lands in Hyderabad from US in search of her husband (Harshvardhan Rane) who had come there to take up a project in his IT company’s Indian branch. Her voice goes unheard in the police station where she tries to file a complaint regarding her missing husband and is aided by a Tamil speaking cop, who eventually starts to investigate the whereabouts of her husband along with her. A twist in the tale reveals the real mission behind Anamika’s arrival and her subsequent actions.
Its appreciable to not stick with a scene-by-scene remake with an attitude to improvise on certain plot points. But the bottom-line is that everything that is on paper has to be convincingly brought out on screen - that was what was lagging behind and made the screenplay look numb and dumb. For instance the character of the undercover hit-man ‘Bob Biswas’ in Kahaani was a smartly etched out role and the character’s backdrop was well established and thus it brought out the eerie feel whenever he was shown on screen, but here a character with a similar look has been roped, but he was never even given a chance to express himself and all he managed to do was to join his hands and pull the trigger the next second - disappointing! Another big flaw was in the casting department - Nayantara, as we all know would make for a really good femme fatale especially in a stylish plot (Billa / Aarambam), but here the femme fatale aspect is more to do with the character’s actions than with the appearance. In fact the appearance needed was more on the ‘woman-next-door’ side which was lacking in Nayantara. The biggest blunder of all was to cast Pasupathy as the CBI deputy, a role that had a terrifying screen presence from Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the original. Pasupathy struggled to pull off the gimmicks with his false attitude and broken English accent. Half the time we end up laughing for what the scene shouldn't be. Vaibhav as the innocuous SI was apt for the role.
Apart from all these juggleries there were songs that tried to infuse in a sense of thrill that was no where in the script, cinematography was bland and the narrative was painfully naive and lacked nativity.
The movie can be avoided without a second thought and can be taken as a ‘lessons learned’ for aspiring script writers as to what not to do while remaking an already successful movie. An experienced campaigner like director Shekhar Kammula coming up with such a stale storytelling leaves a lot to be desired.
Rating: 1.5 / 5
Verdict: Avoidable!
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