Supratik Sengupta

Another remake after Badla (dir. Sujoy Ghosh), somehow Sujoy Ghosh stayed with the original storyline (except a minor character tweak) and was ably supported by Amitabh and Tapsee Panu. But Ribhu Dasgupta deviated from the original and changed the ending. There would not be any qualms about that, had it worked. But it did not. A surprise, just for the sake of it at the end is totally uncalled for and funnily a kind of plot ending twist, which the director had already adopted in his last film Teen(3).

I start with my deep respect to Jyoti Singh - Nirbhaya. No amount of punishment can compensate the evil being done to her. We all know the case - we all the know the end. And that is where the brilliance of Richie Mehta comes in as the director. He is telling a more or less known story, there is no surprise turn of event or a mystery being revealed at the end but once you are into the series the broody narrative starts sucking you like a black-hole. In a way it tries to tell you when there is an extreme evil & the banality of evil around, would you or should you have hope of morality. Most of the film gives you a sense of darkness - the night, the dim rooms, there are very few scenes with daylight. In one such daylight scene, when the apparently non-descriptive lady investigating officer takes a firm stand to book the last one caught as juvenile, you face the biggest moral dilemma of whether to side which is legally right or to side which your all other senses are telling you. Great acting by everybody, even if someone is there for 5 seconds (mother of one the accused, holding her saree in her mouth, looking through the side of curtain, while police takes her son away). See it & with the last frame through the perspectives of Rasika Duggal, wonder why four others & many others are yet to be hanged?

Have seen the movie. And also had seen Invisible Guest. The next question which begs to be answered is Why should one, who have seen Oriol Paulo one, would see the remake or should I say official remake. The obvious reason could be, you have been dragged by those who had not seen the Spanish version. But on a serious note: 1. to 5. Mr Bachhan 6. Tapsee Panu 7. Amrita Singh - 6,7 can swap 8. Some deft change in the script, minor creative licences (no I am not mentioning about key character gender swap) - which made the script smoother to watch. This is for those who have seen the Spanish one. 9. Avik Mukhopadhhay camera and overall production value - it looks as glossy as any Hollywood movie 10. To find out why a director like Sujoy Ghosh would go for an official remake.- the only answer I could think of is he needed a success but he could not find an original script of this genre. So he took the easy path.