 |
Director
: Gautam Adhikar
Music : Anand Raaj Anand
Lyrics : Pravin Bharadwaj
Starring : Arbaaz Khan, Gracy
Singh, Shamita Shetty, Satish Kaushik |
| Wajahh
Movie Stills : |
Click
here |
| Wajahh
Wallpapers : |
Click
here |
|
 Mystery
or palmistry? That's the question. The critical turnaround
in this burnt out thriller depends on a wrong prediction
by a devious palmist.
Maybe he was looking
at a future that this film certainly doesn't have.
This purported chiller
relies so heavily on bizarre coincidences, you wonder
what the debutant director hopes to achieve by subverting
the thriller genre to the point where the characters
appear to be spoofing terror.
The crammed soundtrack
contains every conceivable sound of suspense. Doors
creak open, candles hiss to their extinction, footsteps
run frantically over wooden stairs like horses bolting
out of stables and the terrified heroine (played by
a furiously over-the-top under-the-weather Gracy Singh)
gasps and screams so hard, you fear for her heaving
lungs and your own eardrums rather than the character's
safety.
"Wajahh" is
the most purposeless and puerile whodunit in recent
times. Director Gautam Adhikari tries to scare us with
trademark ammunition deployed in fear-fests. But sorry,
no show. And certainly no terror, unless we're talking
about the terror of being held captive in a dark empty
theatre for 180 minutes with all the exits sealed.
The cast dictates the
calibre of tension in the drama. Arbaaz Khan, forever
the duke of deadpan acting, plays a shrink with a gun
whose emotive range is shrunk down drastically. Between
Khan's grimace and sneer there's no cheer for the audience.
We helplessly watch this wooden non-actor make a mockery
of every conceivable component in the plot.
Gracy Singh as his wife
who thinks he wants to murder her (maybe he just wants
to end her ceaseless sobs and screams) goes the other
way. All her expressions of fear are so exaggerated
she's like Urmila Matondkar in Ram Gopal Varma's "Kaun"
gone completely awry.
The 'Kaun' job is a
constant factor in this film of non-actors. Even while
we're supposed to be guessing the identity of the wannabe
killer, we also wonder why anyone would want to kill
poor harmless Gracy Singh for anything except bad acting.
Mysterious marauders
stalk her any time of the day -- in spite of the fact
that her neuro-surgeon husband spends all his time hanging
around at home trying to look mean and menacing. Then
there're a couple of hangers-on (played by TV actor
Sudesh Berry and co) whose function in the pathetic
plot is as indeterminate as the audiences' motivation
for braving this cinematic travesty.
Somewhere down the line,
for no crime or reason, Shamita Shetty shows up as Arbaaz
Khan's ex-flame, ready to burn up all over again at
the slightest pretext. She throws tantrums more often
than other characters throw corny lines.
The dialogues are wretchedly
unfunny. Satish Kaushik as a comic cop tries to awaken
the corpse that's this murder mystery.
But sorry, even divine
intervention would be nonplussed by the director's determined
effort to make the worst thriller on earth. With the
support of a cast and crew that seems to have been picked
up from an amateur filmmaking school in Bhatinda, Gautam
Adhikari almost gets there.
He copies brazenly from
extraneous sources. The opening, supposedly erotic,
encounter between Arbaaz and Gracy where they pretend
to be strangers about to make love is lifted straight
from Denzel Washington and Eva Mendes' hugely sexy playacting
in "Out Of Time".
At least some erotic
chemistry between the lead pair would have reduced our
boredom. But there is not even that. Watch at your own
risk.
Glamsham.com
|
