“What makes a 90’s looking, Hindi action-drama watchable?” Answer: Hrithik Roshan
Movie: Kaabil
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Yami Gautam, Ronit Roy, Rohit Roy, Narendra Jha, Suresh Menon, Md. Sahidur Rahaman, Akhilendra Mishra, Girish Kulkarni, Urvashi Rautela (special appearance in a song)
Director: Sanjay Gupta
Rating: 3.5 a (+.5) especially for Hrithik.
"Kaabil" is well-intentioned but a fairly predictable picture. It began as a quick-to-conclude love story of a blind, married couple – Rohan (Hrithik Roshan) and Supriya (Yami Gautam). Independently earning, sans-pity and happy together their lives are shattered when the latter got molested by a local-goon, Amit (Rohit Roy) the younger brother of a political corporater, Shellar (Ronit Roy). Police turn a blind-eye to avoid stirrings causing continuous torment of the lady resulting in her suicide. Subsequently, through a rapid-twist of events the “victim transformed into a huntsman”, plotting a clever and equally vicious revenge against the scott free perpetrators.
As quite evident from promos, the dull-sounding plot desperately needed an able handed steering. Director Sanjay Gupta (“Kaante”, “Zinda”) depicted some genuinely tense scenes with intermittent spot-on dialogues (Sanjay Masoom, “Jannat”) and enthralling action (Sham Kaushal, “Gangs of Wasseypur”) marked with his signature dark, graphic-novella theme galvanized in a rate-A sound design (Academy Award winner Resul Pookutty, “Slumdog Millionaire”) and paced background scoring by the regulars Salim-Suleiman (“Krrish 3”).
However, the so-called adaptation of the Korean “Broken” and Hollywood’s samurai-action flick “Blind Fury” couldn’t help the uneven pacing of this two-hour plus stretched film. The average-soundtrack and the VFXed outdoor-backgrounds appeared a little too tacky, not to mention disappointing from such standards.
Thankfully, the casting choices are the best thing about the film. Yami shares a natural chemistry with his co-star and is endearing in every frame. Rohit is maniacal and brief who should also be doing more films just like his real elder-sibling Ronit, already a master-antagonist, displaying his “Udaan”s alternate-version possessing steroidal-tendencies. Cops played by Narendra Jha (“Haider”) have an interestingly-shaped character-sketch along with buffoonishly-condemning Girish Kulkarni (“Dangal”, “Ugly”).
Though, the show-stealer is Hrithik Roshan, all the way and is blazingly brilliant in his portrayal. We tend to involuntarily follow his character’s blind eyes each time, trying to grab a sense of being in a world where his entire life had been disintegrated. Truly remarkable and one of his finest so far.
Given the favourable word-of-mouth, perhaps, “Kaabil” may sail just fine with some fair-collections coming its way. Then again, even a frequent viewer of Hindi films (like me) was honestly a little reluctant to watch it and wasn’t completely wrong either; however, a thriller about an underdog never went too mundane for a viewer.