Exactly 7 years ago, a director disrupted Bollywood cinema, by giving us perhaps one of the coolest Hindi movies of the 2000s. Abhinay Deo created a master piece with Delhi Belly (see my review http://books-booze-boxoffice.blogspot.in/2011/08/delhi-belly-2011.html) and we have waited 7 years for him to come back with the magic.
In many ways, Blackmail has all the makings of what we wanted to see from Abhinay after Delhi Belly - a crazy story line, many unique characters that all get intertwined into the one story, cool editing between scenes, fast paced sequences, pain and blood, with a dark sense of humour, all set against the under-belly of the urban middle class lives, that are not always as happy and clappy as Karan Johar would have us believe.
The movie, actually, starts perfectly and maintains this ‘true to the spirit’ tempo for the first forty-five to sixty minutes of the film - a simple, middle class, devoted husband that catches his wife cheating and decides to blackmail the lover; his ridiculous job as a salesman of a toilet tissue paper company run by a very America-returned NRI; a whole black-mail chain getting created with one blackmail funding the other blackmail (much like the American housing bubble); the random incidents of the boss’s wife’s photo being stolen for not-so-noble uses, and the whole plan getting out of control, as more people taste blood and want a pound of flesh from the action (again, like the American housing bubble!)
But, after that first hour high, the film falls flat. It’s like the story doesn’t move forward, with different scenes just following repetition without any meaning or humour. The jokes and the dialogues feel like a stuck record. You are waiting for the next joke, the next twist, the next surprise, but it doesn’t come till the end. And then, the one word that could be the worst thing to happen to an Abhinay Deo movie, happens - ’predictability’. The movie stops being funny, despite the fact that new funny characters are introduced (like the know-it-all-unscrupulous detective and his blind-bandit-queen wife), and the old not-so-funny characters show new sides to themselves (like the office friend-turned-foe-turned-friend-turned-foe). And finally, the movie ends with a predictable, bland happy ending.
One word for the movie? Disappointing. Not just because of the expectations we had from Abhinay Deo’s next after Delhi Belly (Force 2 doesn’t really count, does it), but because the movie’s central idea had a lot of potential. In fact, Blackmail even has something that DB didn’t - good actors (Irrfaan Khan, Divya Dutta, Kirti Kalahari (from movie, Pink)!
I suppose that’s when you realise that above all, a good movie is about the story. The main weakness of Blackmail (which was the strength of Delhi Belly) is the story line and the screen play. May be Akshat Verma (DB writer) is the critical missing component of Blackmail (which is written by Parveez Sheikh and Pradhuman Singh Mall).
The other weakness of the movie is Arunoday Singh, who plays the tormented blackmailed lover. In many ways, the movie rests on the husband vs. lover comic dynamic through the film. And while Irrfan Khan, as always, does a stellar job of an angry-yet-deadpan-faced plotter, Arunoday just stumbles across the story like an over-sized buffoon with poor comic timing, no real expressions, and no authentic character bone in his body. Even Imran Khan and Vir Das did a better job in Delhi Belly.
May be the other missing ingredient is the production house. Delhi Belly had Aamir Khan and UTV as producers, whereas Blackmail has T-Series. And the two production houses are as different as they come!
Sigh! Sabar ka phal was not meetha this time, Abhinay. But, we still believe in what you can create. Please don’t wait another 7 years for the next one. The world and the audience are changing fast. Promise to come back with your next soon!
#Blackमेल
