“ Pravachan humpe matt west [sic] kijiye,” Nawazuddin tells godwoman Deepti Naval towards the end when the murky veil starts to life from the carnage that qualifies the police procedural.
By then the police proceedings have already gone West.
Nawazuddin’s earthy sleuth’s act as Jatil ( not Jatin, he corrects a colleague) Yadav is way too unruffled by the torrent of mayhem in Raat Akeli Hai The Bansal Murders. An entire family is massacred on a dark moonless night. And mind it: these are not streetside folks mowed down by affluence. The Bansal family reeks of affluence.
Then how did someone enter their citadel and wipe them out? Where was the staff? Where was the security? What happened to sanity? And logic???!!!
Director Honey Trehan and his writer Smita Singh dim all the lights and serenade the silhouettes. Which is not really what whodunits are all about. If you pick up an Agatha Christie page turner every character us rounded and wellshaped.
Here, it is just the opposite. We don’t really get to know any character intimately. They all seem to be in a hurry to exit even before we are properly introduced to them. Barring Nawazuddin and perhaps Revathi (who as the forensic expert brings a semblance of interest over and above the amorphous intrigue that swamps the plot) no one gets substantial playing time.
Most hard hit are veteran actors like M F Zaheer (who as the Bansal patriarch) gets bumped off after his introduction) and Deepti Naval (whose duplicitous guru act needed sharper claws) . They are dismissed from the proceedings summarily, like actors at an audition for a hair-dye ad.
Chitrangda has relatively more space to express her character Meera Bansal’s indeterminate instincts.
The film opens with an angular shot of Chitrangda Singh gazing at the ceiling. I guess she is wondering what we are: where is this going?
It starts with a massacred family (the sanguinary slosh of the machete still rings in my ears) and then swerves towards a comment on lethal toxic wastes and how they affect the lives of children and finally settles for the vendetta card.
There is a subplot about Jatil and his pushy mother (Ila Arun) who don’t look like they have ever met outside the set. Radhika (Shero) Apte tries hard to insinuate herself between the mother and son. As Jatil’s patient long-suffering girlfriend she is of no relevance to the script .
There are screaming murder victims and ranting media persons. But no one is being heard by the tone-deaf script which just wants to thresh in the dark wildly.
