Review: Amitabh Bachchan’s Chehre Makes No Attempt to Save Face

On the face of it, Chehre should inspire confidence considering it stars Amitabh Bachchan, Annu Kapoor, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Raghubir Yadav and Emraan Hashmi together. But just a few minutes into this snooze fest, we know we are stuck as bad as the poor Mr. Mehra (Emraan Hashmi), who on a desolate road must abandon his car because of a tree that blocks the route and take refuge in the house of 4 “holier than thou” men.

I call it a snooze fest in a good way, because the verbose dialogues, the very many wordy, shout-y sentences used per second in this film could have had the reverse effect and driven us to abandon our seats and stage a walk out in a huff. But instead, we allow ourselves to be lulled into submission partly out of respect for Bachchan and partly because there is so much stubborn hope in the human heart.

The film opens evoking an all-pervasive atmosphere of ominous doom. We somehow get the feeling that the Delhi-bound gentleman getting shelter in this house isn’t an extraordinary bit of serendipity but a dark foreboding turn of events somehow orchestrated to trap him. This could have been a crackling premise but instead director Rumi Jaffrey and writer Ranjit Kapoor simply put us off to sleep. The unhurried pace doesn’t heighten the tension or urgency it just frustrates us more. Add to that the fact that no one stops talking!

The four men are actually retired law professionals, we learn. One is the judge (Dhritiman Chatterjee), Prosecutor (Amitabh Bachchan), Defence Counsel (Annu Kapoor) and hangman (Raghubir Yadav). There is also a housekeeper with an impassive face (Rhea Chakraborty) and a man Friday who can’t speak (Siddhant Kapoor).

They play a game where the poor guest must join in as the accused. Emraan Hashmi rightly sports an exasperated look throughout the proceedings and we share the feeling. As arguments are made for and against him, we get to witness the “big bad world” of Delhi nightclubs, intoxicating and lavish farm house lifestyles, and illicit affairs. Samir Soni and Krystle D’Souza are summoned at will and we have nowhere to hide.

To add to that, nothing seems to add up. It is tough to suspend disbelief and burdensome to sit through it all but the message that the film apparently wants to give is an argument in favour of extrajudicial executions and vigilantism.

It’s absurd and dangerous given the times we are in. Amitabh Bachchan gets an almost 10min long monologue where he makes an impassioned appeal in favour of this kind of unlicensed practice. From Nirbhaya to acid attack victims and surgical strike, everything is called upon to justify it. It still remains such a waste of Big B’s talent and our time. Chehre makes no attempt to save face.

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