Kaabil Review
Kaabil |
Blind Rohan Bhatnagar (Hrithik Roshan) meets Blind Supriya (Yami Gautam) on a blind date (apologies) arranged by a well meaning auntie who knows them both. His friend (Suresh Menon) takes them to Pizza By The Bay restaurant (says: this restaurant is famous for Pav Bhaaji!). Before you can say a disbelieving, 'What?!' the blind couple have sung two songs and are in love and they get married. But not before you hear them spout dialog like: 'Two negatives don't make a positive', 'Looks like two negatives are becoming positive', 'Darkness feels light when I'm with you!', 'Never thought I would ever know the difference between aloneness and loneliness.'
It's one hour into the movie and you seek shelter in caffeine because they're speaking ever so slowly. (It gives you time to get really upset over him calling her 'Su' even before she has agreed to become his girl! Also, if she's an independent woman with a job like she insists, how come she stays at home immediately after her wedding? So much patriarchy!)
It's awful throwback to the 70's where the brothers and sons of zamindaars had nothing to do but rape village belles. Here too, there is Amit Shelar (played with 100% sleaze by Rohit Roy) and his friend Wasim who speak what is possibly the worst dialog of the year (to prove their sleaze): 'Do blind people make out with lights on?', 'How do they make love without seeing?' The two rape the blind girl and when the couple proceed to a hospital to get a medical examination, the bad guys have them kidnapped. The cops are unhelpful because they've been bribed by the local Politician. Remember those movies where Amrish Puri and his builder friends with police drinking while poor folks in shanty towns run helter-skelter because the builder has sent bulldozers...
So the blind wife hangs herself from the fan and with her death the case is closed. But the politician (Ronit Roy in a cool role but his Marathi accent is sometimes present and other times absent!) shows up to warn the blind man to shut up, and asks him: why did she wait to be raped again to kill herself?
The Revenge drama begins now. You look at the watch: It's been two hours already. The last thirty minutes of the film are filled with a systematic revenge against the perpetrators, the politician and the cops are left to count bodies. They know it is the blind man who has planned it all, but they don't have any proof. The violence with which the revenge is extracted is a horrific watch. You know it is deserved, but it makes you want to look away from the screen. How the baddies die is a tad predictable, but the twist in the tale is close to brilliant. This is perhaps Hrithik Roshan's best work, but the slow pace of everything: the dialog delivery, the hesitant walking, the dull songs (even the title track is a funeral dirge, and hence slow) make it a test of your patience.
