While we go on and on about superhero fatigue, there’s another genre that is slowly but surely surrounding us: thrillers. There is no dearth of thriller movies and shows in Indian content with one dropping every few months if not weeks.
The only respite is that it is a genre rife with possibility; with the right script and treatment, it is possible to create a nail-biting thriller.
Unfortunately, Blind is not that film. Blind, starring Sonam Kapoor Ahuja in the lead, is a remake of the Korean film of the same name and has a Tamil version titled Netrikann.
Kapoor Ahuja plays the role of a female cop Gia Singh who is racked with guilt after having lost her brother to a freak accident. The accident also results in her losing her eyesight and her job. One day, she accidentally confronts a serial killer, The Driver, and escapes by the skin of her teeth. Naturally, the lead and the villain now both have clashing motives which means that a cat-and-mouse chase is imminent.
Using her heightened senses and her training as a cop, Gia approaches the authorities with everything she has learned about ‘The Driver’, including the hunch that he was holding someone hostage in his car. The film proceeds to film her efforts to solve the case, aided by an investigator Prithvi (Vinay Pathak) and an eyewitness Nikhil (Shubham Saraf).
Saraf is my favourite act; he is righteously frustrated at not being taken seriously and yet, perceptive and kind. And this double act is carried out skillfully by the actor. Sonam Kapoor tries her best to elevate her character in the film. She utilised her grace perfectly to try and capture the inner turmoil of her character but despite a restrained performance, it is inconsistently effective.
She does, however, perfect the mannerisms of her character, astutely sidestepping the need to exaggerate which often happens when able-bodied actors portray characters with disabilities.
Pathak and Lillete Dubey (a maternal figure in Gia’s life) are both exemplary actors and their charm and poise isn’t missing from this film either.
Purab Kohli as ‘The Driver’ is menacing for a short while but his character is barely constructed as a villain and eventually comes off looking like a caricature. The way his character is written makes you wonder if he would’ve been more terrifying if he was doing anything at all other than leering and terrorising his victims and chasing witnesses.
The fact that he is committing these horrific crimes is scary enough, absolutely, but it is nothing novel in the thriller sphere. He has a misogynistic streak, that much is clear, but nothing else is.
With villains adding as much steam to films than the leads, a weakly structured villain leads to a banal film.
The makers don’t seem to respect their protagonists enough to give them the intellect to fight their enemy; they’re all so easily swayed and lured. The script doesn’t let Gia rise above her past; she is presented as a ‘broken’ woman who still has the will to fight and that trope is as trite as it is outdated.
Director Shome Makhija picks up all the rules of a thriller but doesn't twist them or experiment. This means that there are more tropes than there are twists. While there is nothing inherently wrong with using tropes, they need to backed up by a solid script.
Blind’s premise is actually intelligent but the execution leaves so much left to desire.
Gairik Sarkar, however, deserves due credit for his cinematography. The visual aesthetic mirrors that of Korean thrillers with imposing structures framing narrow alleyways in shades of black and grey.
The sound design is rather smart in places - when a radio plays a ballad as two men fight for their lives, it’s refreshing in the film’s atmosphere. Even when a woman is slowly trying to sneak out keeping in pace with her captor playing the piano, the use of sound and silence is exquisite.
It’s this intellect that is otherwise absent from the film.
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