《天作谜案》

Starring: Sidharth Malhotra, Akshaye Khanna, Sonakshi Sinha, Mandira Bedi, Shankar Yadav, Pavail Gulati

Director: Abhay Chopra

VIDRAM SETHI (Sidharth Malhotra) is a London-based mystery writer. His last book hasn’t done well, and he is under pressure to deliver a bestseller. He is in India to launch his next, but circumstances take a strange turn when his wife’s body is discovered in a Mumbai hotel.

It’s natural for the police, led by Dev Verma (Akshaye Khanna), to arrest Vikram after he is seen fleeing the scene of the crime. But the man turns out to be a slippery customer — he gives them the slip and scoots.

Vikram is nabbed a second time at the house of a total stranger, Maya Sinha (Sonakshi Sinha). What’s more, her husband’s body is there too.

The police now face a problem of plenty. They have two bodies, two prime suspects and a number of secondary suspects in what once seemed like an open-and-shut case.

A remake of 1969 hit of the same name, “Ittefaq” uses Mumbai’s rain-prone environment as a suitable backdrop for the murder mystery. The hazy weather and closed spaces spread a canvas and bracket the audience’s view. It’s all very linear, so one needn’t have a prior understanding of the relationships between the major characters.

A large part of the action takes place on staircases and inside dimly lit apartments. You know how claustrophobic city landscapes can get at times. Weird things happen in the middle of congested zones, and there are no witnesses despite the sea of people forever flooding the place.

Debutante director Abhay Chopra plays with the audience’s mind by not introducing many secondary story arcs in the plot. This technique makes people focus solely on the murders, with blinkers on.

From love to seduction and betrayal, Chopra uses every trick in the book. Akshaye Khanna’s cop is under pressure to solve the case within the stipulated period. It seems like an open-and-shut case at times, but what if the murders are not connected, or connected? What if all this is actually by chance?

It’s not “the butler did it” kind of crime as the director gives ample hints of a logical conclusion through the 100-minute film. Anything less than a sensible conclusion would have amounted to shortchanging the audience. Luckily, that doesn’t happen.

However, one major problem with “Ittefaq” is the lack of intensity. Sinha and Malhotra take time in adjusting to their surroundings. Though Sinha continues to struggle with her part till the bitter end, Malhotra begins to hit the right notes after a while. That helps the film a great deal.

You know how investigative officers are used as storytellers in such films. Here, Khanna plays that role with ease, finesse and poise. He binds the story together.

There are no songs to distract, and the camera keeps hovering over the same locations. The idea is to give the audience a “rear window” through which one can see the action, but can’t exactly understand its true nature.

The plot is not absolutely water-tight (the movie would have blown readers away with its twists, if that was the case), but Chopra does put his resources to good use. “Ittefaq” tries its best to create intrigue, and doesn’t give the audience a lot of time to think twice about a single event. That is its biggest achievement.

“Ittefaq” is a decent crime story that will keep the audience hooked and guessing.

The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen.

(SD-Agencies)